Cillian O Briain article from the Kerryman paper , feb 16 .

[rorybbellows]

By Ted Creedon

UILLEANN pipe-maker Cillian Ó Briain occupies a small workshop in the almost
deserted Údarás craft village in Dingle.
“I’m a Jackeen originally and was raised in the Dún Laoghaire area of
Dublin. There weren’t any serious musical people in our family and no
tradition of messing around with instruments. My interest started with the
folk revival in the late sixties and early seventies. I started buying
records of groups like the Dubliners, the Chieftains, Planxty and others so
I was exposed to all that,” he told The Kerryman.
“I attended Coláiste Eoin, which was a new all-Irish school at the time.
This was around the time when the Sloghadh competitions started. The school
was too small to take part in the inter-school football tournaments but we
did very well in the Sloghadh competitions. The head brother put a lot of
emphasis on culture and music. Davy Spillane was a year ahead of me in the
school and I saw him taking to the pipes like a duck to water,” he recalled.
“Davy made it look very easy and that sparked something in me. The sound of
the pipes had an instant appeal for me. Then Séamus Ennis came and gave a
recital in the school one afternoon so there was a lot of exposure to the
instrument at that time. We had four practice sets of pipes in the school
which you could take home at the weekend and have a crack at them. That
must have gone down okay at home because my father bought me my first set of
pipes when I was thirteen,” he laughed.
Cillian credits the modern day success and popularity of the pipes to the
dedication of one man.
“Leo Rowsome was the man who kept it all going through the fifties and
sixties. He performed in every parish hall up and down the country and on
Radio Éireann. He taught in the school of music in Chatham Row and he also
made the pipes in his home and repaired pipes for other people. Only for him
the uilleann pipes would be in a museum now. Paddy Moloney and Liam O'Flynn
have Rowsome pipes,” he added (last year Dingle musician Eoin Duignan
mislaid his set of extremely valuable Rowsome pipes in Tralee but later
recovered them after paying the finders €500).
Cillian became fascinated with the construction of the pipes and signed up
for a musical instrument-making course organised by Comhaltas.
“The course fizzled out after six months so then I spent a lot of time with
a man named Dan O'Dowd. He was involved in Rising in 1916. He taught me how
to make reeds for the pipes. Getting the reeds right is the same as getting
the voice for the instrument. Dan was very involved in setting up the
Piobairí Uilleann,the pipers club,” he said.
An opportunity arose to work with an Englishman, Brian Howard, who was
making pipes in Kilkenny and Cillian spent a year with him.
“After that I came back to Dublin and a job came up working on church
pipe-organs with Kenneth Jones, from Bray. I sort of expected that I would
work with him over the winter months that year but ended up spending almost
ten years with him. The work involved going around the country restoring and
cleaning old organs. He restored the one in St John's Church in Tralee and I
worked on that with him,” Cillian said.
Cillian met his future wife, Bríd, in Dublin and after their marriage they
considered moving to the country.
“A friend offered us a house here in Kerry so we moved to Dingle in 1988 and
I set up as a full-time pipe maker. I try not to get involved in small
repair jobs because I have orders to fill and must stay focussed. The
problem with doing little jobs is the big ones never get done,” he said.
It takes him about four months to make a set of pipes and customers pay up
to €10,000 for a set. Cillian has his own distinctive design but does make
slight alterations in materials if customers desire.
He is now one of the few professional pipe-makers working in Ireland.
Despite the growing international popularity of the pipes there is some
concern in the music industry that there may be a serious scarcity of
instruments in the years ahead.
“Two pipe-makers left the country to work overseas a while back and another
well-known maker, Dave Williams, was killed in a car crash over a year ago
in England. The uilleann pipes are no longer found among the Irish or the
ethnic Irish. Last year I made a set for an Italian and a woman came here
from Argentina last year to learn the pipes. I had to laugh at that film Rob
Roy because it must have really annoyed the Scots. You had an Irishman, Liam
Neeson, playing Rob Roy and the entire soundtrack was of uileann pipes!”
Cillian remarked.
Cillian and Bríd have four children; Felim, Neasa, Diarmuid and Sorcha. They
live near Ballyferriter and now that the Údarás is planning to sell off the
craft village he intends building a new workshop at his home.




Not sure about that line near the end "The uilleann pipes are no longer found among the Irish or the ethnic Irish "


RORY

[PJ]

Good article.

Maybe he means that the pipes are no longer exclusively found among the Irish.

[Jim McGuire]

Even if Cillian was misquoted (gee, how could that happen in a publication), the sentiment is clear. For many years, the pre-eminent makers were Geoff and Alain. Both had reasonable outputs and full-time commitments. The output of the some of the other makers due to many reasons never seemed to approach them in numbers or quality. They became the gold standard, if you will. Dave Williams had a 'split' workshop making other items but people swear by his sets and his assistance. David Quinn, after his hiatus, regained that level, along with Benedict Koehler. All are outside the country and, due to fantastic, unplanned interest, so is much new business.

That also represents a 'generation' of makers making great sets. There are candidates to hopefully, in turn, match their high level of achievement. Those four guys, contemporaries, really raised the bar in pipemaking. Before they were on the scene, pipemakers were most often making pipes as a sideline during their retirement years. We are all grateful to Alf Kennedy, Dan Dowd, Matt Kiernan, Frank McFadden, Pat Hennelly, Leon Rowsome for keeping the flame going after Leo left the scene through the 1970s and early 1980s (and longer in some cases).