Whilst a student in Dunedin, New Zealand Dan played pipes, bouzouki and banjo and sang in the Irish band Blackthorn. More recently he has been half of several musical duos in the Europe area including Musion with Chris Wright, The ASBO Duo with Cammy Robson in Edinburgh and The Boussens Which Project with Franck Delieuvin in Toulouse. He also occasionally plays with the Edinburgh based, Salsa Celtica, and the Puy Laurence based, Gartloney Rats and Doolin. In 1999, along with Jon Bews, Cameron Robson and Gavin Marwick Dan helped to form the Scottish trad power band Cantrip towards which much of his musical energy is focused

Besides playing for concerts Dan has been quite a successful dance piper and has performed for both Scottish Highland and Country dancing. Together with Jon Bews and pianist James Gray he has played for country dances and ceilidhs throughout Scotland and Europe either under the name Rantin’, Rovin’, Reelin’ or Captain Horne & His Hardened Seamen depending on the company and the occasion.

When not on the road or in the air Dan divides his time between Scotland and Marshfield, Vermont where he teaches Bagpipes at Vermont Institute of Celtic Arts.

In 2002 EJ released an album entitled "The WIllow" with guitarist Gerry O'Beirne and fiddle player Rosie Shipley and the three of them did some touring as "The Willowband" for a while. In 2003 when Clandestine was to take a long hiatus EJ began turning Scottish small pipes with his amateur experience making and playing Uilleann pipe reeds as a guide.

EJ has been playing professionally with various groups at all kinds of festivals since 1991 and regularly attends informal jam sessions in his native Houston and in Asheville NC where he now lives. He works to encourage informal music and dancing at every opportunity and believes that playing music is an optimal part of a well balanced life.

EJ now plays around the country with the re-formed Clandestine and a new pipe and drum group called Teribus.

http://www.clandestineceltic.com
http://www.teribusmusic.com

Tim Cummings, a native of Tennessee, began his musical studies at the age of 6 as a student of the piano. He took up the pipes at age 8, and piping has been his primary musical focus ever since. Tim has studied piping with Al MacRae, Sandy Keith, Scott MacAulay, and briefly with the faculty at the RSAMD and National Piping Centre in Glasgow.

He earned his undergraduate degree in Music Education (The College of Wooster, Ohio); and both a B.A. Honours degree in Ethnomusicology and an M.A. in Musicology (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand). During the 2002-03 school year, he was the Artist in Residence at The College of Piping in Summerside, PEI. While living in New Zealand, Tim was a member of the highly competitive Manawatu Scottish Pipe Band, and he continues to arrange much of their repertoire. He has also published several pieces and collections of piping music via Beithe Publishing.

Currently based in Vermont, Tim works as a private teacher, performer, arranger/composer, and publisher of piping and Celtic-related music. In his spare time, he enjoys clawhammer banjo, shape-note singing, the great outdoors, and causing a little mischief here and there.

Best known for his work with Blowzabella, of which he was a founder member, Jon's main instruments are border bagpipes, saxophones and flutes. While his early musical training was in the classical field, he was drawn to folk music while studying instrument-making. He now combines pipe-making with performance and composition. A couple of years after Blowzabella ended in 1990, Jon founded the bagpipe trio, Moebius, for which he writes all the music; they released the album ‘August’ in 1993, and have performed extensively in this country and in Europe and America. In 1998 he started the six bagpipes and percussion group Zephyrus specifically to perform his 35 minute composition ‘The Halfe Hannikin Variations’. Zephyrus was successful in obtaining Arts Council funding for a tour in 1990. A recording of the Variations is planned, together with a new work ‘The English Suite’, a piece which received its first performance in the summer of 2003. Jon has long thought of the possibility of a bagpipe/accordion duo as an opportunity to explore a rich harmonic soundworld not usually associated with pipes. In 2005 Jon and Becky released their CD of English and Border music ‘Love and a Bottle’. They also plan a CD of waltes and mazurkas of their own composition.
Jon has over fifteen years experience of giving pipe workshops in England, Europe and America. Topics can include technique, English repertoire, developing the range and awareness of musical expression, and bagpipe group harmony. To the latter he brings his wide experience with Moebius and Zephyrus.

In 1996, he became a professional musician, playing a variety of bagpipes and other folk instruments for folk clubs, dances, session work, and on street corners! Ian is now based near Seattle, Washington, and plays the Highland pipes, Northumbrian smallpipes, Scottish smallpipes, Northumbrian half-longs, Irish Uilleann pipes, as well as the whistle, flute and English concertina.

His past experience includes film and television work, and performances in the orchestral pieces "Orkney Wedding with Sunrise" (Maxwell-Davies) and "Celtic Requiem" (Tavener), Burns Nights at the British Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, and folk festivals in England, Belgium and Germany. Over the years he has played in a variety of bands, including pipe bands and folk bands, performing in both dance and concert settings.

Ian has won medals at competitions for his performance of highland, half-long and Northumbrian pipes and has won the Northumbrian Pipers Society Competitions "Overseas Class" for the past three years.

In 1998 he produced his own recording, "The Empty Trough", which gives an excellent sample of the differing bagpipes of Britain and Ireland. In addition he has appeared on a number of other CDs including "A Zero Ore" by the Italian folk rock band Ned Ludd, the movie soundtrack of "Monk Dawson", "Boomshamarocka" by the Maryland based Fabulous Potato Heads Rhythm and Blues Ceili Band, and "Wonderful World" by Eva Cassidy.

Ian has recently launched the specialist online CD/DVD store "bagpipediscs.com" which is aimed at providing a wide range of piping recordings of all types from a single source.

In recent years, Jim’s attention has turned to teaching, publishing and performing. His 1992 he made a solo CD – Volume 10 in Lismor Recordings’ World’s Greatest Pipers collection. His tutor and companion CD, Rhythmic Fingerwork, published in 1998, became an immediate bestseller and set a new standard for piping tutors. It is now in its fifth printing. His two instructional videos, Pipes Ready and Pipes Up were released in 2000 and 2001 respectively and have attracted attention from pipers worldwide.

Bill Ochs has been called a "central figure in the renaissance of the tin whistle" by National Public Radio's All Things Considered and "the leading tin whistle teacher in North America" by New York's Irish Voice newspaper. He has devoted over thirty years to playing and teaching the instrument.

Ochs is author of The Clarke Tin Whistle handbook, now in its seventeenth printing with over 235,000 copies in print. He is producer of Micho Russell's Ireland's Whistling Ambassador, and co-producer of Cathal McConnell's Long Expectant Comes At Last, both of which were nominated for "Best Celtic Album of the Year" in the NAIRD Indie Awards.

Ochs also plays the Irish uilleann pipes, which he learned from master pipers Andy Conroy, Pat Mitchell and Tom Standeven in Ireland and the U.S. Ochs's piping studies in Ireland were supported by a 1976 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. His piping and tin whistle playing can be heard on the Rounder CD Light Through The Leaves.

Ochs's performing credits include playing for José Quintero's Broadway production of A Touch of the Poet, Pilobolus Dance Company's Broadway début, the soundtrack for Bob Rafelson's film Mountains of the Moon and the première of Wind by Eiko and Koma at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. He was also piper in the original touring lineup of The Green Fields of America, which included Liz Carroll, Jack and Charlie Coen, Michael Flatley, Sean McGlynn and Mick Moloney.

Ochs has written on Irish music for New York Magazine, Sing Out, The Pipers' Review and other publications. He is currently writing a book on the music of Micho Russell. He lives in New York City where he teaches at The Irish Arts Center.

Laura MacKenzie performs music from Ireland, Scotland, England, Central France, Galicia, Cape Breton and Minnesota on an array of wind-powered instruments, including wooden flutes, whistles, concertina, voice and many bagpipes – Scottish, French, English, bellows and blown.

• Laura has learned from many tradition bearers on both sides of the Atlantic, and has herself been recognized as a Master Folk Artist by the Minnesota State Arts Board. She has been lauded as a "Celtic music wizard" by the Minneapolis Star Tribune and a "High priestess of Celtic music" by Minnesota Public Radio.
• From production work (and appearance) on A Prairie Home Companion to academic work in musicology, from Irish dance bands to national tours with a pop music ensemble, and from theatrical productions to commercial projects, MacKenzie has enjoyed a richly varied career.
• Laura has received an abundance of honors and awards over the years, including being selected for the original Cherish the Ladies series, featuring noted women in Irish music in America, plus multiple performing arts awards and fellowships. Most recently, Laura was awarded an a Bush Foundation Artists Fellowship in Traditional and Ethnic Performing Arts.
• Among other notables, Laura has performed in extended productions with Frank McCourt (Pulitzer prize winning author of Angela's Ashes), T.R. Knight (of Grey's Anatomy, on stage at the Guthrie Theater) and Katie McMahon (of Riverdance).
• As a player and producer, MacKenzie is often engaged for live shows and studio projects, and can be heard on numerous recordings and several documentaries. One of her studio projects sold an amazing 575,000-plus copies. Laura both produced and performed in the popular and festive "Charladies Christmas" and "Gaelfest!" shows, part of The O’Shaughnessy’s “Women of Substance” series.
• In performance, Laura currently appears as a solo artist, in duos with Dáithí Sproule (of Altan), Ross Sutter, in Willow Brae with harpist Andrea Stern, and in the ensembles Laura and the Lads and The Doon Ceili Band. In St. Paul, Minnesota, she teaches students of Irish and Scottish music on whistle, flute and Scottish smallpipes, and has recently released a duo recording with Dáithí Sproule. Laura is the proud mother of the amazing Dugan MacKenzie Magraw.

Once back in America, he learned the fine points of the music from several of the best Irish musicians living in America during the 1970s — Seamus Cooley, John McGreevy, Paddy Cronin, Noel Rice, Joe Shannon, John Vesey, Andy McGann, Jimmy and Eleanor Neary, Terry Teahan, Mike Rafferty and scores of others. In 1978 he earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh for what was then the first dissertation on Irish traditional music ever published.

Author of over 100 books and articles on Irish music including the popular instructional volumes Favorite Irish Session Tunes, The Complete Irish Tinwhistle Tutor and St. Patrick Was a Cajun, Dr. McCullough has recorded on 48 albums for Angel/EMI, Sony Classical, RCA, Warner Brothers, Log Cabin, Kicking Mule, Rounder, Bluezette and other independent labels. From 1983-90 he performed with the French traditional group Bourrée Texane in Austin, TX and currently performs with the eclectic Irish band Hanging Out to Dry.

Formerly the Assistant Director of the Indiana University School of Music at Indianapolis and the Administrative Director of the Humanities Theatre Group at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, Dr. McCullough has composed filmscores for three PBS specials produced by WQED-TV (Alone Together, A Place Just Right, John Kane) and three Celtic Ballets co-composed with T.H. Gillespie (Connlaoi’s Tale: The Woman Who Danced On Waves, The Healing Cup: Guinevere Seeks the Grail, Skin Walkers: The Incredible Voyage of Mal the Lotus Eater). He has performed on the music tracks of the Ken Burns PBS television series The West, Lewis and Clark, Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and the Warner Brothers film Michael Collins.