I came across this short video of a piper. Does anyone know who this is? Tommy Reck perhaps? ( The video Plays in Real Player )
interesting video, dont recognise the pipes either ??? mmmmm
It is Dan O’Dowd.
Wonder what video that is from.
Greg
“JVC Video Anthology of World Music and Dance” Vol. 21. I snagged it from the Multnomah Co. Library’s copy. Just a bit of Dan playing the Dark Slender Boy, then a chap playing a melodeon for some girls dancing outdoors.
A lot of the material on these tapes struck me as cheesy/folky perhaps.
The pipes are the Egan set from Australia which were given to Dan. I don’t know if the chanter is the original Egan, or if it’s the one Dan made with the original windcap? I believe the original Egan chanter had been tampered with at some point and wasn’t sounding as it should
No it wasn’t the original Egan.
On that note does anyone know of an Egan set that is fully working? We were talking about that some time ago (a long time ago actually) but couldn’t think of any.
"On that note does anyone know of an Egan set that is fully working? We were talking about that some time ago (a long time ago actually) but couldn’t think of any." Peter
Ken wrote back in October 1997 that he believed there were around 15 surviving Egan sets plus some chanters, but not all the sets were complete in that their original chanters were missing. Possibly Brother Gildas was involved who knows.
Liam O’Flynn has the Egan set from Scotland ,but I don’t know if it is fully working, or if all parts are original? I seem to remember it had also been tampered with, and that Liam used Dan O’Dowd’s C chanter, the one he made for his own Egan set, for the Brendan voyage project.
…Give me another month. 
BTW I believe there’s a working set in Scotland owned by a certain P.M., also Kevin Henry had one that seemed to be mostly working several years ago (looked as though it had been through a lot though).
There’s a pristine chanter in the south of Ireland that’s playing well. One of the sets in the National Museum of Scotland is within a couple of hours of going again, it was used on a couple of tracks on Autumn Apples but hasn’t been played since.
Dunno about entire sets, but I understand there’s at least one lovely chanter in the western USA. I haven’t heard it but have it on good authority that it’s playing well.
(Jim’s right, it’s dodgy naming names unless the owners are “public” about their sets already…)
Bill
Does anyone know if this set in the Boston museum is original, untampered with and working?
http://www.mfa.org/collections/search_art.asp?recview=true&id=50470
“Give me another month.”
Hello Bill - are you working on the set as we write?
There was a recent discussion about this set. I am pretty sure that it has been tampered with, the extra regulator arrangement just doesn’t make sense and in any case looks rather bolted-on.
But honestly, any set of pipes that’s 150+ years old and playing probably isn’t totally original, and vice-versa. There are occasional lovely exceptions.
Sets in museums aren’t usually playing, because even if they were put into playing order in recent memory, lying around in a display case or in storage for years will ensure that joints are either loose or cracked, and that reeds aren’t adjusted, and bags have perished. Sets like the Kenna in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum may be the exception to this, since the Curator of Musicology (Robbie Hannan) is a piper and may put them in working order from time to time.
Pat McNulty recorded a few tracks on his album Autumn Apples using an Egan set which was loaned to him by a Scottish museum. I don’t have McNulty’s cassette with me at present so I can’t give any more info than that.
this link is not working
carel
It worked for me last night. I just tried it again and it is still working. The video stream didn’t work so well, but the audio was fine.
its working now
Just to follow up on this, the inlay card of Autumn Apples mentions:
“Side A tracks 2 & 7, Side B tracks 3 & 6, were recorded with a full set of Egan pipes pitched in the key of C, which are now kept at the Scottish Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh.”
The tracks in question are:
An Boherin buide (the little yellow road) Air
Ragan’s Jig
The Lightning Flash, Reel
Slan Le Maighe Air