Na Píobairí Uilleann

Chairman, NPU

An Píobaire

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8 2 26 20120411 26 ~ Reports ~ CHRIS LANGAN WEEKEND, TORONTO T HE 21ST ANNUAL Chris Langan Weekend was held in Toronto on January 14 and 15, 2012. The headliners for this year’s weekend were the American pipes and fiddle partnership, Kieran O’Hare and his wife Liz Knowles, and Belfast-born and Boston-resident flute player Peter Maguire. The musician in res- idence was the multi-instrumentalist student of Chris Langan, Pat O’Gorman. Instructional classes in piping, fiddle, flute and tin whistle were held during the day on Saturday. Kieran is a careful and effective pipes teacher. We worked on a few simple pieces of technique that I found very helpful. One piece of technique in par- ticular that I would like to relate is Kieran’s C nat- ural technique. Kieran is an advocate of playing C natural with both the two top fingers of the bottom hand off the chanter (ie. as if playing a G) and then slowly rolling the index finger of the top hand off the top hole. It is Kieran’s position that this en- hances the player’s control of expression when playing C natural. I think Kieran is totally right, al- though I am far from mastering this technique. Just raise the index finger slightly and use the top two fingers of the bottom hand for vibrato while rais- ing the chanter as desired. I found this harder than it sounds, especially when one is accustomed to tak- ing the top hand index finger right off the top hole and raising the second or second and third fingers of the bottom hand to sound a C natural. Ontario-based pipemaker Joe Kennedy revealed his latest project during one of the Saturday afternoon classes with Kieran O’Hare. Joe is the proud owner of a mid-eighteenth century set of pipes with four drones and a single regulator he believes to be made by the great Irish pipemaker Kenna. If it is not a Kenna set, it is very Kenna-esque. In any event, Joe believes that the set was likely a set of pastoral pipes. While Joe has the drones and regular playing perfectly, the chanter that came with the set has un- fortunately been re-bored and is unplayable. Joe has made an uilleann pipes chanter to play with the set, which sounds fabulous, but he has more recently made a pastoral chanter which he now plays with the set to restore it to its original form. Having ex- perimented for some time, Joe now feels he under- stands what is needed to reed a pastoral chanter. Although still working out appropriate fingering and technique for this non-staccato uilleann-pipes cousin, Joe demonstrated the pastoral sound on the pastoral chanter he made for the old Kenna instru- ment. In Joe’s opinion, it would be a mistake to de- scribe the pastoral pipes as the missing link between piob mhór and uilleann pipes. He feels there were a lot of changes in chanter bore and design before the union/uilleann pipes were born and the transi- tion from pastoral to union/uilleann pipes involved more than just removing the foot joint from the bot- Greg Graham Kieran O’Hare playing the Pastoral Pipes

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2012-04-21T00:00:00

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