Instructors
We strive to craft an exciting instructor roster every year, and 2025 is no exception! Learn more about the outstanding instructors you can meet, learn from, and play with at the Gathering!
Eliot Grasso
Eliot Grasso (uilleann pipes, flute, tin whistle), has taught, performed, and recorded throughout North America and Europe for over two decades and is a founding member of the Celtic ensemble Dréos. He has performed for President Clinton at the NEA Awards, appeared as a featured artist on “Prairie Home Companion,” performed and taught for the William Kennedy Piping Festival in Armagh, and appeared as a soloist in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall for Scotland’s National Piping Festival, Piping Live. Eliot has over a dozen recordings to his name, including an album of unaccompanied uilleann piping, which is volume 1 of Na Píobairí Uilleann’s series of master pipers, The Ace and Deuce of Piping. Eliot holds a Ph.D. in
musicology from the University of Oregon, and a M.A. in ethnomusicology from the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick. Grasso’s artistic and academic work as a performer, recording artist, composer, and researcher has earned awards from the traditional music community, the recording industry, and the academic establishment. He teaches music at Gutenberg College in Eugene, Oregon.
Chris Gray
Chris Gray is a Maine-based oil painter and uilleann piper whose work explores memory and tradition. Gray received his MFA from Maine College of Art & Design, with previous degrees in Art and Music from Bowdoin College (BA in Studio Art and Music) and University College Cork (MA in Ethnomusicology with a Diploma in Irish Music). Gray’s paintings are heavily influenced by his background in Traditional Irish Music and his personal experience of ulnar neuropathy. In 2018, bilateral nerve damage required Gray to take a step back from the music, and inspired a significant shift in his studio practice. He began to seriously explore memory as it relates to artistic and musical traditions, looking at the way in the which the performative act of painting can revive, reify, and transform memory in a manner that parallels revivals of traditional music.
Shannon Heaton
Deeply rooted in Irish traditional music, Boston-based flute player/singer/composer Shannon Heaton has appeared on stages in four continents. She shares tunes for learning and live-streamed sessions on her educational YouTube channel. And after receiving a 2016 Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, she launched the Irish Music Stories oral history project which explores universal themes through an Irish music and dance lens.
When she is not playing Irish music, Shannon is an avid runner and hiker. Many of her compositions and podcast episodes have been written and developed on the trails of the Middlesex Fells Reservation.
Dick Hensold
Dick Hensold is the leading Northumbrian smallpiper in North America, and for the past 25 years has performed and taught in England, Scotland, Japan, Canada, and across the United States. He has released numerous CDs as a member of the groups Piper’s Crow, Way Up North, The New International Trio, the Lyra Baroque orchestra, and with Ruth MacKenzie’s Kalevala. His solo Northumbrian smallpipes CD Big Music for Northumbrian Smallpipes was released in 2007, and he has recently released a duo CD with County Cork guitarist and vocalist Patsy O’Brien.
His research interest in early Scottish music resulted in a lecture and concert appearance at the 1997 Lowland and Border Piper’s Society. The proceedings of this conference, along with Hensold’s two other related papers, were published as Out of the Flames in 2004. He is much in demand as accompanist, studio musician and theater musician, and frequently composes new works based on the traditions of the Northumbrian pipes.
In addition to the Northumbrian smallpipes, he also plays Scottish reel pipes (an indoor version of the Scottish Highland pipes intended for Scottish dance music), seljefløyte (Norwegian willow-flute), säckpipa (Swedish bagpipes), pibgorn (Welsh hornpipe), whistles and recorders. He plays in several traditional and historical styles, with particular emphasis on Cape Breton, early Scottish, and Northumbrian, but also including Scandinavian, medieval, Irish, Cambodian, and original music.
Tracy Jenkins
Tracy Jenkins is a Border- and Scottish smallpiper based in Knoxville, Tennessee. Originally from Northern Virginia, he played the Highland pipes at McLean High School and in the Washington Scottish Pipe Band before focusing on the Border pipes and the Scottish smallpipes, along with whistle, banjo, and song. Tracy has performed throughout the eastern U.S. in recent years with the Seán Heely Celtic Band, the Reel Sisters, and other friends. An active member of Knoxville’s Scottish and Irish session communities, he bridges multiple traditions. Tracy’s approach to traditional music involves a blend of deep dives into traditional tunes, original compositions, and fresh takes on old favorites.
Ian Kinnear
Having grown up in the north of Scotland where he started playing highland pipes under the tutelage of John McDougall, Ian has been immersed in piping throughout his life. He began his career as a full-time maker of bellows pipes in Edinburgh in 1993. Ian and family moved from Edinburgh to rural Angus in 1998, where he continues to make smallpipes and latterly uillean pipes in his workshop in Edzell. As a maker for over 30 years, Ian has greatly contributed to the development and promotion of the smallpipes, having focused particularly on developing smallpipes that have the volume and stability to be useful as session and ensemble instruments.
In addition to being a full-time maker, Ian is a regular at local sessions and festivals. Playing pipes has given him the opportunity to travel to a variety of places meeting many interesting folk along the way, from performing in local village halls to the Royal Place in Barcelona, Burns Suppers in Moscow, and culture events in Manitoba.
Ian is well known and sought after as a teacher of smallpipes. For over 20 years Ian has been organising and teaching a popular annual bellows piping weekend in his home region of Angus in Scotland. He has been invited to teach at events in Germany and France as well as at Piping Live Festival and for the Lowland and Borders Piping Society.
Making, playing, and teaching smallpipes has been a lifelong passion for Ian. He is delighted to be invited to the Pipers’ Gathering for his second visit as an instructor.