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Launch of the Leo Rowsome collection
Traditional music notes with JOE MULLARKEY
It was a gala evening at Cultírlann na hÉireann recently when the Leo Rowsome Collection of Irish Music was launched. The Rowsome family, luminaries of the Irish traditional music movement, colleagues, friends and admirers all gathered for this auspicious occasion.
The book of 428 reels and jigs from the pen of the master Uilleann piper is a unique publication, which will be eagerly sought after by musicians and the wider public. Published by Waltons, The Leo Rowsome Collection is a beautiful publication, which was a labour of love for Leo’s daughter Helen Rowsome-Grimes who was music editor of the book.
As a musician and recording artist, Leo was responsible for bringing Irish traditional music to a far wider audience than ever before. He made his first radio broadcast in 1926 and performed regularly thereafter on 2RN (later Radio Éireann).
He was also the first Irish artist to be broadcast on BBC television in 1936-37. Leo performed regularly all over Ireland, England and Scotland; in New York’s Carnegie Hall; in the Queen’s Hall, London and with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. King of the Pipers (Rí na píobairí), his most famous recording, was Claddagh Records first release.
As a pipe maker, Leo was an unparalleled craftsman. Having learned the craft from his father at a time when the Uilleann pipes were going into serious decline, he made for himself a concert pitch set of pipes that “remained for close on half a century an object of fascination for countless audiences and of veneration and almost superstitious awe for pipers” Liam O’Flynn has always played a Rowsome set of pipes.
Leo was also a tireless educator. Appointed teacher of Uilleann pipes at Dublin’s Municipal School of Music when he was only 16, he continued to teach there three evenings a week until his death in 1970.
His 1936 Tutor for the Uilleann Pipes,
published by Waltonís, was the first such tutor published in Ireland. Leo also passed on his knowledge to some of the finest pipers in the world today, including Liam O’Flynn, Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains and Joe McKenna.
Finally, Leo played a central role in the twentieth-century revival of traditional music. Having reformed the Dublin Pipersí Club in 1935, he was instrumental in forming Cumann Ceoltóirí Éireann (later Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann) in 1950. And he was amongst the dedicated members responsible for staging Ireland’s first annual Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, held in Mullingar in 1951.
Speaking at the book launch, Garech de Bruin of Claddagh records said of Leo: “If he (Leo Rowsome) hadn’t been here, the whole tradition could have been lost because he was the only person who made the instrument that people played on.
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