Eliot Grasso (Ph.D.) is an uilleann (‘ill-en) piper who performs, teaches, composes, researches, and records in Irish traditional music and beyond. Uilleann pipes are a form of bagpipe developed in Ireland in the 18th century. They are distinguished by the use of a bellows, a two-octave keyed chanter, and regulators that can harmonize with the melody.

Eliot began playing the uilleann pipes at age 11. Raised in a musical household, he was given the the opportunity to study the pipes with master musicians in Ireland and America. His first commercial recordings as a teenager brought his music to the attention of growing audiences with his solo debut album Standing Room Only receiving critical acclaim.

Critics have described Eliot’s playing as “remarkably compact and precise, tastefully embellished with a restrained creativity and inventiveness,” in that it demonstrates a “superb technical ability” through “a startling depth, consistency, and clarity of tone.” Contemporaries claim that Eliot’s “intuitive sense of melodic and technical variation make him one of the most creative and dynamic musicians in the contemporary world of Irish traditional music,” and “one of the finest uilleann pipers in the history of Irish music in America.”

In 2006, Eliot married and moved to Ireland to begin graduate studies in ethnomusicology at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick and give piping master classes. Having finished his M.A. in 2007, he moved to Eugene, Oregon to pursue a doctorate in musicology at the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance.

Currently, Eliot serves as Vice President of Gutenberg College where he also teaches music, art history, and philosophy.

He maintains an active performing, teaching, and speaking schedule in between driving his three children to ballet, piano, and lego robotics.