Irish Music Magazine / December 2004
Standing Room Only
by John Brophy
Eliot Grasso, uilleann pipes
Suppose you're a young piper with your first CD, and you ask someone for a few kind words. When Eliot Grasso did, he found Robbie Hannan who said that he heard the young lad on Achill Island "I was immediately aware that I was in the presence of a master musician, despite the fact that he was still in his mid-teens."
It's hard to go wrong with a launch like that. So I popped on the first track and within two minutes I was hauling back part of the track, cranning like this is just scarily good. But, no I hadn't been mistaken the first time: there is a technique here, which makes you want to doff headgear and say "Sir". You pick a nasty hornpipe like the Tailor's Twist, and he splashes around the difficulties like an otter near a waterfall.
The album is dedicated to his first teacher, Paul Levin, there was standing room only at Paul's funeral. Eliot uses two sets of pipes a 3/4 set by Kirk Lynch of Weston, Missouri, and a full set by Andreas Rogge. Accompaniment is just fiddle and guitar on some tracks, and it shows simply that there's a background of much good session playing here. If I've any complaint, it's that the speeds are quite fast, but the playing is so effortless that it's purely a sign of youthful enthusiasm.
Most of the material is classic piping tunes: My Darling Asleep, The New Policeman, The Blarney Pilgrim, but he has three of his own tunes, and another three from Jerry Holland of Cape Breton.
There's no biographic note, so I have to presume that Eliot comes from an Italian background somewhere near Baltimore, MD. For my own part, after hearing this, he could come from Mars, he'd be welcome to stay as long as he wants, and he'd still leave us breathless in admiration.
