Alison Perkins (fiddle) and Nicolas Brown (uilleann pipes, flute) play Irish Traditional Music pitched in B.

"Alison Perkins. Grit. An individual voice. The most magnificent bow arm. Even a long note on an open string bursts with spring and propulsive energy, calligraphic variation of pressure. Elsewhere, her bowing bundles you along irresistibly and cheerfully towards a better mood.
Nick Brown, playing a Joe Kennedy set pitched somewhere south of B. He swears he was once in my class at a tionól, but in my recollection he seems to have just emerged as a fully-formed piper like Justin Trudeau jumping out of a cave. His pipering ticks all the boxes: great control of tone; an understanding of tight playing that goes beyond the usual bag of triplets; complex yet mercifully judicious regulator playing ; solid rhythm.

Like many musicians playing Irish traditional music outside Ireland, Nick and Alison are obliged to create their own tradition. Tunes come from everywhere, from living or recorded example and from dormant manuscript: from fiddler Edward Cronin, and a whole bunch from Sgt. James McFadden and Sgt. James Early via Capt. Francis O'Neill and the Dunn Family Collection of cylinder recordings; from O'Farrell; from Armand Aromin and Paddy Fahey and Nick Brown himself. A cornucopia of melodic delectables, indeed, but Wait! There's more, and the more hinges on the fact that duet playing is a relationship made audible.

I love this. I listened to Byrn's March again and then to Johnny Cope. Now there is an epic travail of a tune, and the opportunities to lose your way are many, the opportunities to show off your piping bits or your fiddle bits at the expense of the groove or at the expense of your partner. Not here. They have listened to each other visit the stations of the tune (to use Reg Hall's felicitous phrase) on their respective instruments, and they know what each other is capable of, so they know what might happen on each instrument at each little meander in the tune. It is patently and beautifully obvious how much they play together and how thoughtful and generous they are with each other's playing, and the moments of perfect duplication are delightful because they come from that depth of rapport and love that characterizes everything they do. Those moments are like auditory high-fives, celebrating togetherness. This is not duet playing rehearsed to dull perfection, this is grownups accommodating and encouraging and embracing. Jeez, I love it. I am sure you will too."
-- Patrick Hutchinson

A note about the tunes: A few years ago, while reading O’Neill's Irish Minstrels and Musicians, I became interested in Sgt. James Early, a piper, and Sgt. John McFadden, a fiddler, musical partners, who were both members of the Chicago Police force with Capt. Francis O’Neill. Around this time, the Ward Archives in Milwaukee released digitized versions of 32 cylinders of music, which included Early and McFadden, fellow piper Sgt. Bernard Delaney, and Edward Cronin, a fiddler, piper and the original scribe for O'Neill and his 1903 collection. These recordings provided a fascinating glimpse of music in Chicago in the late 1800s and early 1900s. As Alison and I also play fiddle and pipes, it seemed that it would be interesting to learn some of their music. About half of the tunes on this CD come from these musicians, and all such tunes were sourced from O’Neill’s Music of Ireland, published in 1903, with comparison to the cylinders and his other works as noted. The rest of the tunes come from other musicians, recordings, books, and friends. -- Nick