swisspiper
I live in Switzerland in the highlands of Zurich and try to play the uilleann pipes, the flute and the (low) whistles.
My pipes are aconcert pitch full set in boxwood made by Allan Ginsburg around 1980, but most of the time I play it with my Andreas Rogge chanter which is an exact copy of the Seamus Ennis / Liam O'Flynn chanter made by Leo Rowsome. Recently I bought two flat chanters in Bb and C made by Rogge as well - that is another pair of shoes.
I found my flute in a second hand shop for 30Euro, but it was damaged with cracks and broken or leaky keys . I hanged it on the wall and it was nice to look at, but a few years later I started to tinker sucessfully and at the end I had a quite nice flute, not very loud, but nice sound. It is probably from the 19th century and made in Germany and it's much better than a few German flute I touched since!
The band I play with for 30 years now is called 'sláinte', more information at http://www.slainte.ch or at http://www.myspace.com/slaintech. Since a few years I'm playing at sessions also (but that's not my main interest), especially at the one in Zurich, see http://www.thesession.org/sessions/display/1632
I love a lot of different music, so the real traditional music like Willie Clancy, Tommy Reck, Liam O'Flynn, Micko Russel, Jean-Michel Veillon , Mick O'Brien , Ronan Browne, Matt Molloy.... to name a few.
Some bands I would like to mention are Planxty, Bothy Band, Lunasa, Altan and The House Band and on the not so traditional side Stockton's Wing, Moving Hearts, the (early) Pogues, Stoneage, Celtas Cortos, Gwendal.
Beside Irish music I like music from the Bretagne, Galicia, Eastern Europe, North Africa, Klezmer, Scandinavia, but I like also music by Frank Zappa, J.S. Bach, Tom Robinson, John Lennon, Tom Waits, Mary Coughlan, Elvis Costello, Mari Boine,The Toy Dolls, Laurie Anderson, Max Lässer, Steve Reich, Barbara Thompson, Flann O’Brien, Soul, Reggae, Salsa and African music - anyway any music played with great spirit!
[ too much name dropping here - says my internal trad police]
Tunes in swisspiper's tunebook: 1168