On October 29th, 2010 Barry Stapleton gave a talk on the Dunn Family Collection at

Beautiful plaster design on ceiling at Na Píobairí Uilleann

Na Píobairí Uilleann,The Pipers Club in Dublin. Its a beautifully restored Georgian house on Henrietta St. So besides all the good work their doing in regards to keeping the piping tradition alive…they’ve also contributed greatly to the restoration of Dublin in preserving this beautiful building.

Many thanks to Gay McKeon, Gerry Lyons & Terry Moylan for their hospitality. The Presentation went great and I think the crowd enjoyed it. After my presentation Sean McKiernan played for us on the set of pipes that Patrick Touhey played. These are the same set of pipes that were played by Touhey on the Francis O’Neill cylinders CD that was released that night in Ireland. So these recordings are 106 years old. Then to hear Sean play the same pipes so eloquently was really quite a treat.

Afterwards we retired to Hughes pub were we had a great chat about all things Irish music related. My thanks to Nicholas Carolan & Rab Cherry who also came to the event. Nicholas is of course the director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin and Rab is involved with Cairdeas na bhFidiléirí.

Sean McKiernan

Touhey's Pipes

The one thing that stands out for me on this particular trip is the passion that these people bring to their institutions. All the folks at Na Píobairí Uilleann are extremely dedicated to the preservation and continuance of the piping traditions. In fact one of the areas of concern within the pipers community is the availability of quality pipes. So Na Píobairí Uilleann is in the middle of a major project called the PipeCraft initiative. They hope to be able to offer hands-on training in pipemaking this fall.

Nicholas Carolan, Gay McKeon, Sean McKiernan, Barry Stapleton