10. Seamus Ennis
|
I recently received a gift of a collection of 10 cassette tapes, mainly of piping music, from my good friend Tom Wilsbach of Maine. Tom is a piper and music collector who, in 1978, completed a degree in musicology at the University of Maryland entitled Never was Piping so Gay: Uilleann Piping in the United States. Tom shared his very interesting thesis with me which is now in the library of NPU in Dublin.
The first tape I have digitized is a concert given by Seamus Ennis at the Tradition Club, located upstairs in Slattery’s Bar, Caple Street Dublin in 1972. Performances were held every Wednesday night at this club, which was run by Tony Crehan & Sean Corcoran (members of the folk group The Press Gang), Kevin Conneff (of The Chieftans) and singer & songwriter Finbar Boyle. When I shared my recording recently with Ronan Browne, he immediately recognized it and said he also had a copy of the same event. When we compared files, we found I had just half of the concert while Ronan had the entire event and he very kindly sent me the missing tracks. Note: I have made the following modification to the final track on the recording. On that final track, Seamus delivers a long introduction to the tune (Bucks of Oranmore) and in both Ronan’s and my recording, the tape ends just as Seamus was about to play the tune. To complete this recording, I have separately recorded Seamus playing the Bucks from a televised recording now up on YouTube and added this the final track below after the introduction. |
Seamus Ennis in Sandycove
(photo by Anne Browne, 1977)
Tom Wilsbach
|