Springy Music!

Not to be outdone by the mockingbirds, my pal Mazz Swift and I are doing a bit of springy music tomorrow night(weds) at Caffe Vivaldi on Jones Street, here in the village:7pm-8pm Come join if you can!
Love,
Chris

Ellis Island Tartan Day

Spectacular days for Scottish Culture on Ellis Island this last weekend. Calum Pasqua and I played there. Here is some Video:

Deil's In The Kitchen-Drunken Piper

Love, Chris

Snow Falling on Cherry Blossom...Ick.

Yes, it seems impossible but after this unbelievable visit to Kamakura, Enoshima, and Zushi for a day off Tuesday...It snowed here in Tokyo last night. An excellent few days tho: I took Kieran Coleman, who is on his first trip dancing here, to visit Mr. Nakagawa, my old bassoon teacher and his wife. We all had a great day of traveling around the sea side and seeing the ancient capitol-Kamakura with all of it's charms. It was nice to get out of tokyo for the day and the sun was welcome after a few drippy days. We all had super fab pork cutlets(Hooiser soul food) and hot sake at the end of the day in a little joint known for such things. The warm sake was jus the thing to finish a windy day by the sea! Yesterday, my painter friend: Naomichi Okutsu came to visit me in the city and brought some of his new works which were lovely and gave me a sketch lesson...Yay! We headed over to Shinjuku for dinner and had some really spicy curry which was again, just the thing since it began to SNOW as we exited the elevated metro train...sigh. Sunny today and the last of my three days off...

Bye for now,

Chris

Toky-town Breakdown!

Yes, it's true folks: all powder is creamy in Japan. It has something to do with the equatorial gibbis, reversing the coriolis effect during transcontinental flights. Nevertheless, here I am in Tokyo etc. doing press shows for the upcoming Trinity tour this July. Mr. Nakamura, our agent here, took Kieran Coleman(Yes, the dancer.) and I out for a smashing platter of sashimi, some yakatori, miso, flaming welk(Yes, flaming welk.) and a host of other culinary delights after we landed last night. We are just west of the Ginza, which is cool since it's close to the Tokyo Palace grounds, one of my favorite places to go running in the morning. Hugz,

Chris

The Brendan Voyageur

Well, the road again for me kids...it WAS swell to be back in NYC for our little winter spewage/meltage. Now it's sort of like a huge coffee coolatta in the gutters of Gotham. Yay!

Anyway, just home practicing my pipes until Thursday, then off to Billings, Montana to perform with the Billings Symphony.

We'll take a spin through Shaun Davies' Brendan Voyage, a programatic suite for Uilleann Pipes(yours truly) and orchestra written back in the 80's. (That means from before the Lord-of-the-Titanic-Riverdance-Effect.) Anne Harrigan will conduct in her usual slendiforous manner without question.

Peace and Plenty,

Christopher

Layer Duo Splits Musical Atom!

Yay! Here is a picture of my dad (aged 85) and me this last Saturday in Battle Ground, Indiana: playing for the annual Burns' Night soireé. The local bagpipe band: The 42nd Royal Highland Regiment Incorporated of Lafayette Indiana, hosted the event. The dancers had fun and so did we.

Some of the tunes dad and I played were: Angus Campbell, Smith's a Gallant Fireman, The Drunken Piper (I never was...) Mary's Wedding.

Next stop: Holland, Michigan, Thursday for a duo gig with Martha Waldvogel, and then on to Battle Creek Saturday night where Martha and I will play with the Battle Creek Symphony, in Kellogg Hall, of course! (Insert bad breakfast cereal puns here if you wish...)

Cheers,

Chris

P.S. Her is a preview of a little web site Anee Harrigan made for me: JUMP

On the road

DEN airport:

Great session with Tony DeMarco last Sunday in NYC ALL the Irish heads were there...unbelievable.

Great gigis for APAP with Norouet in NYC this last week.

-Lovely session at Swift last night with Issac Alderson and Eamon O'Leary.

Back on the road for a bit now:

-Moab, Utah for the annual Robert Burns Tribute Concert with the Moab Community Dance Band, The Playford Trio, Sandra Wong, and Marta Burton! The haggis will be flowing on the 23rd of January!

-Then on to Houston Texas for some more Scots fun with Andrew Wier(of Braveheart fame) for a one-nighter.

-On to Indiana for a family visit and see my lovely nurse/stylist Roz Wollen.

-On to Michigan for a gig with harpist Martha and the Battle Creek Symphony on the 6th of Feb. Home to NYC after that:-)

Hope to see you "out there"!

Love,

Christo

Hi all,

Well the APAP season is already upon us. Here are the details regarding FREE concerts in town with my Quebec Trad quartet, Norouet as well as the super fab trio, Des Temps Anton:

Thursday, Jan 7th, 7:30pm @ Swift on East 4th Street(Near Bowery St.)

Friday, Jan 8th, 10pm @ Barbes, Brooklyn

Sunday, Jan 10th @ The Scratcher on East 5th Street(Near Bowery St.)

We need your support and the bands are way amazing!

Please drop by to see us if you can!

Best wishes,

Chris

Here and there...

Hi all,

Well it was an excellent night at the Loeb House Inn. I could not have asked for a better audience and my friends Denise and Michael were really fine as well! The remainder of the weekend was spent out doors camping and celebrating he 40th anniversary of my old fife and drum corps: The Tippecanoe Ancient Fife And Drum Corps. It was full of friends and music and lots of jamming. I felt happy to have the time to be at the event and the organizers did a fab job on the food and hospitality.

Today's photo features the personel involved in a concert for the Moab Music Festival this las Fall. From left to right:

Paul Woodiel-fiddle/Hardanger fiddle

Greg Heffernan-cello

Sandra Wong-fiddle/Nykelharrppa

Me-flute and Pipes

Steve Gibb-guitar

Peace and love kids,

Christopher

Watch this space!

Hi all,

I will be performing a solo acoustic house concert with special guests: Denise Wilson and Michael Lewis, at the Loeb House Inn in Lafayette, Indiana on Weds, October 7th.

-6:30 wine and cheese reception, 7:15-ish concert. One set, 70 minutes.

-I will have copies of my NEW CD production, N2, by my Quebec-based trad band, Norouet. The CD is getting good reviews and you won't be able to get it on-line for a bit, so come on down and have some fun with me at the Loeb House Inn!

Peace,

Christopher Layer

Music As Food...A Picnic In Central Park

"If music be the food of love, play on!" And so we do. The "we" is of course The New York Shakespeare Festival, under the auspices of The New York Public Theater. For the last two months, since my return from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, I have been rehearsing, and now performing the original music of neo-trad band, HEM, with the NYSF production of Twelfth Night for "Shakespeare In The Park". Central Park's, Delacort Theater, here in Manhattan is a wonderful, bucolic setting beneath Belvedere Castle. For the Public Theater, it is the most celebrated (read: biggest) of its venues all year. The reviews are in and with a scant 10 performances left, I am happy to say that we were well-received. In addition to playing Uilleann Pipes, Scottish Smallpipes, Whistle, and Six-Key Flute, I wrote the Funeral Dirge, and contributed/arranged the trad tunes for the little onstage band. (HEM is releasing a CD of the show music with Anne Hathaway, Audra Macdonald, David Pittu and Raul Esparza singing the songs. I "guested" on the CD and again, contributed a few things. HEM is a fine bunch of talented folks: I would be happy to collaborate with them in the future.) Come see us if you can: Just look on-line for the various ways of obtaining free tix! Here is the Times review by Charles Isherwood<jump>. Next entry: Memories and Roots in Quebec!

Spring is alive and well and living in the Village!

Hi all,
Here is a picture from the times with some special additions by my friend Gammy Miller. Home for a few more days, then New Orleans for a few weeks. See you at the Jazz Fest. You know where to find me:-)
Much love to all,
Chris

The Ides of March Strathspey and Reel

Happily home in NYC for the Spring season....I had an excellent visit with Paul St. Raymond and Dr. Kimberly Meng of New Orleans: gardening on their roof deck, viewing the Mardi Gras week parades and EATING!!!!!
For those in NYC, I will be playing Tuesday Night Irish Sessions at Swift Hibernian Lounge on East 4TH Street through the end of April.
Also this week and next, I am participating in a dual set of concerts with the New York Festival of Song and The Caramoor International Music Festival. I will drop all those details tonight when I return from rehearsal!
Best to all,
Christopher Layer

long overdue

hello all! it's snowing in joliette quebec, my present location. much much snow and even more music! the band, norouet, me included, is busy finishing up work on the new cd. if you send me an email, i will send you a sample. much love and music. chris

The New Norouet CD

Today we are continuing to work on the new Norouet CD here in St Côme, Quebec. I began to play with this wonderful band back in 2000 and appeared as a guest when they made their first CD "Spirale" in 2001. The group features fiddler/singer/composer Stéphanie Lépine, percussionist Patrick Graham, and singer/composer/guitarist Éric Beaudry(of La Bottine Souriante fame). Éric created an excellent recording studio in "un grand shack" behind his father's house deep in the back country of Quebec. Already a foot deep, the snowfall is covering the woods in a blanket of feathery white. The pines have a lovely spiral shape: the boughs holding the snow like pallets of white dough. Winnie and Cliquot, the two resident hounds, can do nothing but frolic and play in the chilled fluff. The stillness is calming and a wonderful retreat from the excitement of New York. My pals, Natalie Haas and Yann Falquet will come this next week to add some guest tracks to the CD. I will try to post some photos in the coming days!
Peace, Chris
P.S. Don't forget the solo gig at L'Interlude this Saturday night at 8:30pm!

Snowy Quebec!

Hi all,
Sorry for the time lapse. I have been skating about since my concerts in Michigan and Indiana, but have finally landed for a bit in sunny Quebec for continued work on two upcoming CDs: A new Cd from Norouet, with Éric Beaudry, Stephanie Lepine, and Patrick Graham, and one from my dear friend, Jean-Paul Loyer. Both are set to drop in the spring and both promise to be full of the great spirit of the North Country. I will be updating this week as we work with some action photos, quotes and maybe even a vid or two. Meanwhile, for those of you with friends in the greater Montreal/Joliette area, I will play a solo concert at L'Interlude in Joliette, Quebec this Saturday night! The gig starts at 8:30pm. A few special guests will join in for the party so drop in and enjoy the show if you can.
Much love to all, Christopher

Home Again Home Again...

Home at last!
If you've ever lived in NYC, than you know it is always a thrill to top the hill on the road from La Guardia airport and see the old Gotham sky line rising over Greenwood Cemetery, and to know what joys, heartbreaks, and opportunities await you there. Looking back over the last weeks on the road, there were plenty of fun concerts with my harp buddy, and musical pal, Martha Waldvogel-Warren.
Marti arranged for a couple of fun gigs in Michigan, and I set up a concert in Lafaytette, Indiana. The concert at Third Reformed Church in Holland, MI was a highlight: the audience was cheerful and really receptive to the music. We managed to get a pretty good video of that concert, so watch this blog for a posting of it. Saturday last, we drove down to Indiana where my friend (and Tippecanoe Ancient Fife and Drum Corps Director) Malcolm Duncan put on an excellent pickin' party for Marti and I in his barn in Battleground, IN. Singer, Steve Stump regaled all assembled with his great songs, whistlers Steph and Malcolm chimed in and Marti and I did our best to add to the general air of jollification! Thanks to Malcolm for the great time!
Sunday afternoon, Dick Nagel hosted Marti and I for a house concert at the Loeb House Inn in Lafayette to a fun capacity crown and folks seemed to really enjoy the music as well. Look for photos and such of the events here soon.

My Concerts This Weekend

Ready for some kickin' Early American and English dance tunes and totally transcendent all-male vocal music in The Cathedral of St. John The Divine??? Get thy corpus up to the "largest gothic anything in the whole damn anything" just up the Red Line here in Gotham, Saturday night at 8pm, and Sunday at 3pm. It's gonna melt your soft parts and give you strength. We (New York Early Music Foundation) just did an audiophile recording live to two mics in the hall this week, so the stuff will be fresh baked, and in that spacious reverberant chamber it's gonna be wet, wet, wet....I am sure there will not be a dry seat in the house. You are gonna love the "gut string trio"...fiddle, chamber bass(a sort of cello-y thing) and six key flute. De lovely Paul Shipper is also doing some citern, guittern, and drummy things too.

Much love to all, Christopher

The Old Flail

On the news that one of my flute heroes had made the grade and ascended to the land of light last August, I began to assemble a bouquet of tunes of his to send out into the ether for his pleasure. The upcoming tour will feature some threads in the tapestry that was his life. His lines often cover new ground, and the doors he opened with those lines are at once old and new. Vincent Broderick spent much of his life writing and organizing tunes for the enjoyment of others.

Itinerant Piper

Hi Kids! Here are some solo and duo tour dates for the Mid-West in November...
-Sunday, November 9th, 7:30pm: Radio Radio 1119 Prospect Street, Indianapolis, Indiana, "Solopipes" show
-Thursday Nov. 13th, 7pm: Holland, Michigan: Third Reformed Church: Duo show with harpist, Martha Waldvogel-Warren
-Friday, Nov. 14th, 8pm: Wealthy Theater, Grand Rapids Michigan: Duo show with harpist, Martha Waldvogel-Warren
-Sunday, November 16th 3:30pm: Loeb House Inn, Lafayette, Indiana, Duo w/ Martha Waldvogel-Warren