Some images, randomly picked, from the 50th WCSS (Willie Clancy Super Spreader , some would argue). They’re monochrome, it worked out easier. I have not yet lost my sense of colour. So there you have it.
This covers Sunday-Wednesday. May post more later, if anyone is interested.
Yes, we’re interested. Thank you so much for posting these wonderful photographs!
Absolutely wonderful Peter.
Thanks for posting these. I look forward to seeing any others that you may have.
The lighting in the Macdara one is spot on.
Cheers
John
OK then, here’s another few . I am only sorting though the Willie snaps at the moment and I am plucking some fairly random ones out of the lot, unedited, The concerts are lit in a bright yellow/orange that doesn’t make people look very well so rather than editing that as best I can, I converted the lot to monochrome for now.
Great photos Peter, obviously the best decision made for a long time was making you the official photographer.
RORY
Liam McNulty used to bring out all the pupils of the more advanced piping classes out, creating a record of players. It also had the advantage you could catch players who were to grow into proper pipers very young. I cooperated on a few occasions during the late nineties/early naughties. This sort of thing:
That particular film also has images of young Louise Mulcahy, Seamus O Rochain and a few others that are still going.
And there’s the young and upcoming from concerts of the nineties:
It’s good to have record like that. For the 50th Willie week a photo presentation was put together with images through the years, right from the start to 2019. It was running on screens in the Hall. A lot of things have changed since the early years, a lot of familiar faces gone.
Great to see Dave hegerty still about
RORY
Dave and his wife were on good form. It was good to see them. He was working away in the reedmaking room in the mornings, as usual.
Lovely photos. Have you considered putting together a book of photos of the WCSS over the years? I’m sure that there would be great interest in such a book.
Very nice photos there. Who is the young lady playing what seems to be a left-handed Wooff set? I’ve seen her before but can’t think of her name. I recognise Rita and Marion, but not the other female pipers.
Good to hear that Dave Hegarty is still doing the reed making course. He was always very helpful. I heard that some people did get infected though, Jimmy O’Brien-Moran for one. Hope you managed to dodge the bug.
The Willie Clancy Super Spreader name above was tongue in cheek. But only a little bit. It spread like wildfire. A lot of people came away with it.
The left handed set Muireann ni Shé is playing one of Derrick’s and very nice it is too.
She appears on the “Piping in the Parlour” series with her new set.
A lovely player and the set sounds wonderful as well.
Thanks Peter for giving us non-attendees a glimpse into the Willie 50.
According to the date on the right of the post I am 20 years on this site (would that be correct?)
John
Yes of course, Muireann Ni Shé, and Derrick was inspired/taught by Geoff. I looked at this video and the set does sound fine:
https://pipers.ie/source/media/?searchTerm=%20Muireann%20ni%20Shé%20&mediaId=31550&pageSize=12&sPage=1
During the Willie week a digitised photo exhibition looking back on 50 years of SSWC/WCSS ran on a big screen in the hall. Fun to see who you recognise, didn’t everybody look young and how many we have lost and all that.
An, I believe, slightly extended version was posted on YouTube recently (I was told a few weeks ago it was to go up but didn’t keep an eye out.). Kenny posted a link on thesession.org recently but it may be of interest here as well.
See here
Hi Peter - they are a great series of photos, a veritable “who’s-who” of the traditional musicians of Ireland in the last 50 years. Sometime last year, or possibly in 2021, we had some correpondence about a whistle player, a young lady whom I had heard performing at the Flute & Whistle recital in 1980, Mary Anne Sexton. Is that her to the right of Micho Russell in the photo at 1min ?
PS - great to remember the times when Darach de Brun - and some others, self included - had hair.
I missed this thread last July. I went to the Willie week, got Covid, and was sick as a dog for about a week. I holed up in a single room Air B and B in Mayo. And I missed the pictures!
Most, or at least an awful lot of people got covid after it. In fact I had it when I posted this thread, out of boredom, waiting at home for a negative test so I could get out again.
You saw the slideshow though, it was running in the hall and one afternoon you were sitting right next to it selling the book 
.
great to remember the times when Darach de Brun - and some others, self included - had hair.
Yes the hair, lots of it at times, Kenny. I think that’s mine in the lower corner of the Seaumus Ennis outdoor recital 
.A hairy version of myself turned up in the 50 years docu that Edel Fox produced for tg4, I bet she had a good laugh finding that and including it. I had cleaned up by the time I was playing a 1985 lunchtime recital for the pipers, see the pic in the slide show. I was younger then, than my son is now, would you believe it.
The request for the slideshow was to give some older pics and some from 2019, when Tony was absent. With hindsight I regret not submitting a few more. Ah well.
Yes I did see the slides! I liked sitting at the ITMA table chatting.
I didn’t keep the copies I posted at the start of the thread and I am not sure what I posted anyway, pipers. I won’t be reposting. But here’s one I didn’t post before, it may look out of place on this forum but Gearoid is a piper. Although perhaps, as some would say, a gentleman piper: someone who can play them but doesn’t. It was all Québécois for them that week. And very enjoyable it was too.
