2010 Instructors
Pipes
Gay McKeon
Gay McKeon took an interest in uilleann piping in the 1960s under the tutelage of the renowned piper and pipe-maker Leo Rowsome at the Piper's Club on Thomas Street in Dublin's city centre. Understandably, Leo had a profound influence on Gay's playing, as did the other musicians who taught at and visited the club including the uilleann pipers Tommy Reck, Dan O'Dowd, Seán Seery, Willie Clancy and Peadar Broe. Gay was also heavily influenced by many of the fiddle players who lived and played in Dublin at that time including Seán Keane and John Kelly. After Leo Rowsome's death in 1970, Gay sourced much of his repertoire from published collections including Breathnach's Ceol Rince Na hÉireann.
Since the mid 1970s, Gay has toured and broadcast extensively as a soloist. Also for many years has taught at major summer schools and music festivals. Gay has performed on three volumes of the acclaimed tutor series The Art of Uilleann Piping, published by Na Píobairí Uilleann. He has also produced and directed publications including The Pipers Choice DVD series and CD recordings published by Na Píobairí Uilleann. He has produced many traditional music concerts, including Piperlink which has toured in Ireland and the North America.
In 2006 Gay was appointed CEO of Na Píobairí Uilleann, and in that capacity he project managed the restoration of its Georgian headquarters on Dublin's historically significant Henrietta Street.
Tiarnán Ó Duinnchinn
Tiarnán is an award winning uilleann piper from Monaghan who started playing the uilleann pipes when he was around nine years of age in The Armagh Pipers Club. He has won four Fleadh Ceoil (Ist place) All-Ireland titles and two Oireachtas titles. Tiarnán has being touring and performing professionally on a regular basis since 1995, both as a member of various bands and as a solo performer. His music has taken him to Europe, the United States, Asia, Africa, Canada, Japan, New Zealand,and Australia.
Tiarnán toured extensively with Máire Ní Bhraonáin (Clannad) from 1997-2001 and recorded two albums with Máire during that time: "Whisper to the Wild Water" and "Two Horizons.He has recorded with many artists, between CD's, TV advertisements, or films. He has often played and presented radio and T.V. programs.
"Ceol is Piob,"" a CD of Tiarnán and Stephanie Makem (song), accompanied by Steve Cooney, was released in June 2008 to great critical claim.
Eamonn Dillon
Born in West Belfast, Northern Ireland, uillleann piper and whistle player Eamonn Dillon has toured and recorded both as a solo artist and with a varied group of performers, touring shows, and bands. Working between the US, Canada and Europe, he has performed and recorded as a featured artist in both traditional, theatrical, and mixed genre ensembles, including Needfire, John McDermott, The Irish Tenors, Celtic Bridge, King James, Sarah Packiam, and Paloma Faith, among others.
He first learned the tin whistle from his father, and Tara Diamond, before getting his first set of uilleann pipes, made by the great master Sean McAloon, who mentored him while starting out.
He is currently in pre-production in the US on his new solo CD, featuring his sister,acclaimed fiddle player Roisín Dillon, formerly of Cherish the Ladies, and other guest musicians and vocalists.
Kara Doyle
Kara Doyle was born in Wisconsin, and spent her youth in California. Moving to the Northeast for graduate school brought her into regular contact with traditional Irish music, and she began to play whistle in 1995.
She contracted a severe case of uilleann fever in the late nineties, and began piping in 2001.
Kara has been very strongly influenced in tone, repertoire, and pedagogy by the teaching of Benedict Koehler and Brian McNamara, and admires both the tight piping of Tommy Reck and the lyrical musicality of Mick O'Brien. She lives and plays in Schenectady, New York.
Benedict Koehler
Born in Boston, Benedict grew up listening to recordings of Irish traditional music sent over by his mother's family in Dublin.
He took up the pipes in his twenties and has listened to and learned from a wide range of the older players, citing as particularly strong influences the stately musical tradition of East Galway and the complex and elegant piping style exemplified by Seamus Ennis and Liam O'Flynn.
Well-known as half of the uilleann pipemaking partnership of Koehler & Quinn, Benedict is also an insightful and generous teacher and an engaging performer who has shared the stage with musicians such as Kevin Rowsome and Lorraine Hickey, Willie and Siobhan Kelly, Brian McNamara and, of course, his own wife, harper and accordion player, Hilari Farrington.
Cillian Valleley
Starting at age 7, Cillian Vallely learned the whistle and uilleann pipes from his parents Brian and Eithne at the Armagh Pipers Club, a group that for over 4 decades has fostered the revival of traditional music in the north of Ireland. Since leaving college, he has played professionally and has toured all over North America and Europe in addition to Japan, Hong Kong, and Australia.
Since 1999, he has been a member of the band Lunasa, with whom he has recorded 5 albums and played at many major festivals including Womad, Edmonton Folk Festival and The Hollywood Bowl. He has also performed and toured with Riverdance, Tim O Brien's "The Crossing, New York-based Whirligig, and the Celtic Jazz Collective with Lewis Nash and Peter Washington.
He has recorded on more than 40 albums including Callan Bridge with his brother Niall, and various guest spots with Natalie Merchant, Alan Simon's Excalibur project with Fairport Convention and Moody Blues, GAIA with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, and Karan Casey. He has recently recorded on two movie soundtracks, Irish Jam and Chatham, and played uilleann pipes on the BBC's Flight of the Earls soundtrack.
Reedmaking
To Be Announced
Fiddle
Rose Conway Flanagan
Rose Conway Flanagan is a traditional Irish fiddle teacher from Rockland County in New York who originally began music lessons as a child with Martin Mulvilhill while was growing up in the Bronx. She further developed her Sligo style of playing with the help of Martin Wynne and her older brother Brian. She played on the first recording of the all-women Irish Group "Cherish the Ladies."
She currently has a large fiddle school in her hometown of Pearl River, where she is hard at work preparing the next generation of great fiddle players which include several All Ireland winners and medalists. In her spare time she has been a regular instructor at the Catskills Irish Arts Weeks, runs various seisuns, and plays with her group the Green Gates Ceili band in the tri-state area.
Patrick Ourceau
Fiddler Patrick Ourceau has been playing Irish music since his early teens. Born and raised in France, Patrick moved to the US in 1989, settled in New York City where he lived for seventeen years, and is now based in Toronto, Canada.
Mostly self-taught, Patrick's taste for Clare and East Galway music developed early in his playing after being introduced to recordings of the legendary fiddle players Paddy Canny, Paddy Fahey, and Bobby Casey. Patrick regularly visits Ireland and especially county Clare. Over the years, during those trips, he has been able to play with and learn from Paddy Canny, as well as from many other local musicians including flute and fiddle player Peadar O'Loughlin. During the many years he lived in New York, Patrick often played with such great musicians as fiddle players Andy McGann and Paddy Reynolds among many others, but was particularly influenced by the style and repertoire of Woodford, Co. Galway flute player Jack Coen.
He is a member since 2003 of the band Chulrua, along with accordion player Paddy O'Brien and guitarist and singer Pat Egan. The trio released last year, on Shanachie Records, The Singing Kettle, their first recording together. When not touring with the band, Patrick performs with guitarist Eamon O'Leary. In 2004, Patrick and Eamon Released Live at Mona's, a live recording project praised by critics and fans alike as one of the best recent releases of Irish traditional music.
In the last fifteen years, Patrick has been in great demand as a teacher and regularly teaches both privately and at various festivals and summer schools across North America and Ireland.