A Glimpse of Our House Concert with Jerry O'Sullivan and Damien Connolly

They started with Johnny Allen's Reel and the tunes rolled on from there for a very generous two and a half hours. In between sets, Jerry and Damien filled us in on the history of the music with colorful stories about musical characters back in Ireland. 

Jerry explained how he uses one elbow to pump air from the bellows to fill the bag under his other elbow. Hence the name: uilleann pipes which translates to "elbow" pipes in English. He said air blown through the player's mouth would be too moist and destroy the reeds in the chanter and pipes. 

Damien told us that the inside of his accordion is constructed like three harmonicas, one tuned to pitch while one of the others is slightly flat and the other slightly sharp. The bellows force air through the keys which release the notes.

At one point Damien played a tune he composed for his wife Sally. It's called Sally Gally and interestingly it's become quite a hit in Japan. A group of Japanese musicians even made a wonderful music video of the tune which you can see here. 

We want to send out a huge thank you to everyone who was able to come out for this fine house concert and hope even more of you will be able to join us for future ones. Meanwhile, here's a sample of the concert and you can see two more videos on our YouTube Channel here and here.

More Photos from the House Concert