Eliot Grasso, Standing Room Only (Grasso, 2003)

"Whenever possible, place the CD in the context of the artist's career, and in the context of the genre of the music." -- GMR stylesheet

Context. Well, then: this is the first solo recording from a musician who has been known (to Irish traditional musicians, at any rate) for close to half his life as a master of that most difficult instrument, the uilleann pipes.

Please indulge me, and let me share with you some of the things that players of Irish traditional music say about Eliot Grasso.

"Eliot is a brilliant young musician and one of the finest uilleann pipers in the history of Irish music in America," Mick Moloney e-mailed in response to my query. "He has wonderful virtuosic skills and a fine repertoire of tunes, many learned from some of the greatest Irish musicians in the U.S. It's been quite wonderful seeing his musical and personal growth. . . I see an extraordinary future ahead for this most talented of musicians."

"Followers of Irish Traditional Music will think differently of Baltimore upon hearing Eliot's new CD," wrote Billy McComiskey. "If I didn't know Eliot and the players on this recording, I would assume they were from Dublin or West Clare. This is a recording of Irish Traditional Music at its finest, ever, from anywhere. "

Kieran O'Hare, Grasso's second teacher (whose influence shows clearly in Grasso's style, pressure, and tone; listening to Grasso is spookily like listening to O'Hare), watched his student go on to win multiple first place titles in the Fleadh Cheoil, both in the uilleann pipes and tin whistle divisions, and perform everywhere from the Kennedy Center to the home of the Irish ambassadour. "He had everything from the very start," O'Hare told me. "He had the drive, he had the determination, the obsession, the fire in his gut. What was there for me to do? I hardly had to do anything. I taught him what he needed to know and watched him take it from there as far as anyone can."

Myron Bretholz, who wrote the liner notes for this CD with Grasso, came up with the following anecdote:

"At the 2000 Washington DC Irish Festival, I approached Robbie Hannan. . . I said words to the effect of 'Robbie, on behalf of all of Eliot's friends and musical mates here, thanks an awful lot for all of the encouragement and guidance you've shown him.' His reply: 'ME show HIM stuff? That would be like showing Tiger Woods how to putt!'"

And Robbie Hannan himself wrote me, "As you will have guessed by now, I have the utmost admiration for Eliot as a musician and as a friend. I am sure he is going to make a lasting impression on the world of uilleann piping."

Getting the hang of the context, here?

The overall impression from listening to Standing Room Only is one of superb technical ability, a remarkable display of good taste, and the ease and relaxation of the expert player. Grasso seemingly feels no need to impress (though he does that from the moment he nimbly rips into the first jaw-droppingly gorgeous reel). His choice of tunes includes many unusual ones, though there's no clogging the CD with a glut of the obscure as sometimes seen on first efforts. There are also some rather common session tunes that Grasso has confidently included, though they sound far from common coming from his pipes.

"I just picked tunes that I play often and really like. It's really only through playing a tune millions of times that one becomes bored and therefore inventive," Grasso explained. "So, these are just my versions or whatever of the standards. Some tunes, like 'Garrett Barry's', (that) was one of the first tunes I ever learned from Paul (Levin, Grasso's first piping teacher) and, even though it's a great jig, I had more sentimental reasons for including it."

Grasso is already well known among musos on both sides of the Atlantic for his skillful variations, that hallmark of musical maturity in Irish traditional music, variations of sometimes striking beauty and illumination.

"After listening to the recording months later, I thought of other variations to play, but of course it's too late and 74 minutes isn't adequate space to hold all the variations on one tune as I see it," Grasso says.

There's regrettably only one air on the album, "The Satin Slipper," which Grasso learned from the playing of Kieran O'Hare and fiddler Jesse Smith, and his tone, subtlety and restraint are of an impressive standard.

There's a charming, deceptively facile rendition of "The Tailor's Twist," that piper's litmus test of a hornpipe, and four of Grasso's own tunes have made the album, leading me to hope that more of his tunes will slip their way into the tradition. My favorite two of these are the jig "O'Hare's Tilt," a wedding gift to Kieran O'Hare and fiddler Liz Knowles, and "The Grandmaster," a lovely twisty reel named for Liz Carroll's son Patrick, who plays chess.

Jim Egan and Patrick Mangan add their fiddles for some variation of sound on four of the tracks (I'm particularly taken with the playing of Egan, although Mangan is an equally fine player). Zan McLeod and Andy Thurston provide backing. The four players offer work that ranges from simply "pleasant" to "fecking brilliant" and back again. The album highlights the piper's star turn, though, and all four are clearly aware of this; the mastering by Zan MacLeod and Charles Johnson amplifies upon it.

The production work is clean, perhaps even a touch too clean, but that's a quibble that falls far down the list and which would largely be of concern to Irish traditional musicians of a purist bent. The material design is good stuff, personal without being too quirky or precious, with elegantly clean design values. The liner notes are wonderful.

Simply put, this is a lovely album all around.

Those who love the sound of the uilleann pipes will find here an admirable recording from a musician who will leave an indelible and distinctly individual mark upon the world of Irish traditional music. (That it is a first solo recording is only an added astonishment. However, Grasso has appeared on many another recording; notably, his earliest was as the youngest player and sole American on A New Dawn: Uilleann Piping, Another Generation, an album from Dublin's Na Píobairí Uilleann.) Irish traditional musicians will find inspiration and illumination here. All who pay attention will be rewarded with a recording that allows them to hear something new and different with each airing.

Now, frankly, Irish traditional music types place just as much emphasis upon whether a musician is 'a good hang' as upon whether they're great musicians. I'd like to share three tidbits with you about Eliot Grasso, the second told to me long before I knew about the existence of Standing Room Only.

The first is about the title of the CD. Standing Room Only does not refer to the state of ticket sales at Grasso's performances. Grasso dedicates the recording to Levin with these words: "Paul's warmth, kindness, and love of the music drew so many people to him that there was standing room only at his funeral. May he rest in peace."

The second involves my friend Emily, an obstetric nurse, who happens to be Grasso's older cousin. A former silver flute player, she had recently taken up Irish music and asked for a lesson from Grasso while she was back home in Baltimore. Partway through the lesson, keenly aware of his virtuosity and her then lack of same, she burst out with "God, but I'm cr*p!" (A fairly common thing for Irish players to say about themselves, by the way, no matter how good they are.) Grasso stopped and seriously said, "Emily, you deliver babies. Human beings. Into the world. I play nursery rhymes. Which one sounds more important to you?"

And, for our last bit of context, this: Eliot Grasso has, as of the date of this writing, not legally hit his majority. Standing Room Only was recorded when he was eighteen. He turns twenty-one in December of 2004.

If God is good to me, perhaps I'll live long enough to hear Eliot Grasso hit his musical stride in his maturity. Until then, Standing Room Only, and whatever else he records between now and then, will suffice.

[Zina Lee]

Eliot Grasso’s CD is available at CDBaby, and more information is available on his Web site.