The Great Northern Irish Pipers’ Club will be featured at the all-new Pipers and Session Tent at the Minnesota Irish Fair:
www.irishfair.com
That’s this coming weekend, Aug. 10-12.
We will be offering a variety of piping-related programming including Master Piping (via Michael Cooney), Singing with the Pipes, The Performance of the Set Dances - with solo set (step) dancing to the specific piping set dance tune - plus performances by the club. There will be engaging displays and information on uilleann piping to boot.
Ambitious! I hear you exclaim. Well I dare say! Ambitious! is, after all, our middle name.
Yours,
Tommykleen
The Great Northern Ambitious Pipers’ Club
www.gnipc.org
Talk about euphemisms.
I intend to remain manageably sober at the fair this year.
And it’s a chance to see upwards of a dozen uilleann pipers performing at once. Why you ask, why!? Because we can and we shall!
Of course, I notice we’ve been scheduled at some rather interesting times. I’m sure this has nothing to do with the caterwauling of last year.
And after seeing us play, never again shall questions of tuning be raised!
Drunk Nano? I have always maintained that a show has not truly begun until you’ve fallen off the stage.
My goal, in the event that I do so, is to keep playing without interruption this time.
The first photo is of our very own Nanohedron with his trainer “lady” guitar…oops..I mean bouzouki…oops I mean Cittern. Nano is accompanied by his lovely assistant Tom Klein squeezing his well played-in K&Q tayloresque set. Well done guys, Tom’s got a grand version of the Eagles whistle I’ve always particularly enjoyed. I’m glad we had the sound system working for these sets as Nano’s playing was extremely well done. Seriously folks, some very fine performances were given by these fine artists.
Mr. Michael “Is it hot enough for you?” Cooney. An obviously fine piper and a true gentleman. Ahhh but wasn’t he the grand one for sharing his bottled mineral water?
Here one can play the home version of “Where’s Waldo?”. Can you find the Maunster in this photo? Hint: he can be seen gleaning wisdom from the great one…
Did anyone record any of this? Posting sound bites maybe?
I don’t think anyone recorded anything. We were all too busy sweating. If you want to hear Michael, check out the GNIPC website for the tionól footage.
Here are some more photos. Some of the battle-hardened GNIPCers on the Gateway Stage. It was 90f and huuuumid. My fingers kept sticking to the chanter. Mister Keen’s reg keys have developed a nice new green patina, and Nano. Well, Nano won’t talk anymore and just stares off into the distance muttering “the horror, the horror”.
Speaker of Nano, the man himself with that lovely Ginsberg C set:
And here is Michael with this wonderful young dancer who performed a set-dance or two Saturday and Sunday:
Gotta love those curly wigs.
Looks like a lot of fun guys! You all look very cool and sophisticated on stage.
J.
Yeah, and a great classic shot of me strapped in, predictable ciggy stuck in my face and about to ash my pipes. Proof positive that I’m no gentleman piper. A feckless and ne’er-do-well impression, no doubt, but of course I was just tuning up and idly taking advantage of some downtime before the big guns started. Gotta do something about those fingers, too.
I’m too used to playing the C stick; the D was an elusive change for me those days and kicked my butt.
tommykleen’s Eagle’s Whistle is always a pleasure, but this time he brought out Castle Dromore, too, and it was charming and regulator-fabulous. I nearly wept to hear it.
Major props to Terry and Virginia Keegan - proprietors of Keegans Pub in Minneapolis - for sponsoring the pipers’/session tent. The traditional music has been something of an inconvenient foster child to the Fair for some years, getting shunted around from here to there and sometimes no venue at all, never a place to call its home. The tent was a success, no question, for not only was it well used by all the musicians, there were loads of spectators. I always believed that there were plenty of fair-goers who very much wanted to be able to hear the traditional music on its own terms, and the Keegans’ gamble proved this. Build it and they will come.
It was an honor, privilege and pleasure to play backup for tommykleen and, most especially, for Michael Cooney. It can’t be right to have so much fun.
Nanohedron wrote:
The traditional music has been something of an inconvenient foster child to the Fair for some years, getting shunted around from here to there and sometimes no venue at all, never a place to call its home.
Interesting, isn’t it, that actual traditional music should enjoy such a marginal position at so many ‘Irish,’ ‘Celtic,’ and/or RenFaire-World Music-Mishmash type events? I like what you said about listening to the music on its own terms, and I think people do enjoy it when they hear it, but how rare the opportunities are to do so. It just doesn’t fit the checklist of audience (or festival organizers’ / publicans’) expectations these days:
- Does it have its own sound system?
- Does it have a bass and full drum kit?
- Does it have dropkick, flogging, Murphy and/or Molly in the title?
- Curly wigs?
- Does it make people want to buy more drinks / clap and sing along / dance on the tables / lapdance / buy more drinks?
- Hair tossing fiddlers?
- Did they play it in The Quiet Man or Darby O’Gill and the Little People?
- Is it Bord Failte approved?*
*Applicable only to venues in the Republic of Ireland.
There’s nothing more exciting than the unexpected encounters generated by mismatched expectations. Some friends and myself were recently persuaded to play a session-style gig for the Friday dance night in the bar of the local Eagle’s Club (normally reserved for country rock bands). Now that was funny. We finally quit playing after the third request to put the jukebox on. Clearly they weren’t drinking enough.
Mark
And at the end of the day, the venue and its expectations are everything, right? The Twin Cities are rich with opportunities to hear live traditional and modern national musics from all over the world; Hmong, Egyptian, Somali, Russian, Greek, Scandinavian, Andean, Brazilian, Flamenco, Caribbean, Klezmer, Balkan, not to mention Native American, Bluegrass, C&W, and Old Time, to name but a few. One time a fellow suggested I might take part in a Somali session, but as kind as that was, some things aren’t a proper fit, you know? Still, in your case, you’d never know until you tried. So good for you. I might have given up after the second request for the jukebox, if not the first.
Anyway, Terry Keegan is well pleased with the result of the pipers’/session tent and has said he’ll sponsor another next year. Hope it continues so. 
Manly! I like the partnership between the bass drone and the cigarette… very visually pleasing 
DRINK!
Pat.
Marketing. 
I actually have eyebrows. But if you can see them, you’re probably too close, fella.
There IS a sort of overbusy composition to the pic, isn’t there. BTW, those fair-chairs suck out loud for pipering. Felt like my knees were up to my chin. I might just bring my own next time.
I seem to recall my lackey/cupbearer was on a mission for that very thing at the time.
Oh, and by the way, you’ll notice that the tent is festooned with large laminated repros of the piper pics from O’Neill’s Irish Minstrels and Musicians (done strictly for the sake of educational purposes, of course, and not for sale). Those were loaned for the purpose by Tom Dahill (who with Michael C. and Eamonn Tunney did the pipes-and-singing demos, very entertaining), and that really helped make the tent’s atmosphere in a big way.
Another thing, GNIPC members: I have the sign-up sheet and other paper stuff from Sunday. Call me or shoot me a PM so whoever gets that gets that.
