Hello all. A question please, are there any contemporary whistle players that are not playing just the traditional Irish and Scottish music? Perhaps some more modern or other branches of music? Any names come to mind? I would love to know the complete compass of the whistle. Thanks.
Bryan
(I heard an mp3 of a whistle player playing Vivaldi’s Spring from the Four Seasons . . . very good too!!)
Give a listen to Flook.
One name that immediately springs to mind is Misha Somerville of Croft #5, who also makes MK whistles. I saw the band play earlier this year at T in the Park, and had a fantiastic time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a whistle player do the splits before (well - not intentionally anyway…)
Check out Millish – there’s a bit of trad in there yet, but it’s mostly jazz with fiddle and low whistle / pipes.
Phil Hardy.
Thanks all!! Great links.
Rory Campbell is one of my favorite pipes/whislte players. I especially like the work he does with NUSA. Very contemporary, very cool. http://www.nusa.co.uk
Wow! Great link! I’m going to have to buy the CD now, I think.
I was dying to hear what the “Stairway to Heaven” track would sound like - but that was the one and only track that led to a “page not found” error - hey that’s funny; did they mean Jimmy Page?
Philo
I guessing there are probably legal reasons – I’m pretty sure all the soundclips are either their compositions or trad. The “Blue Rondo” (ala Turk) sample fades out well before the actual Dave Brubeck tune starts.
Canadian group The MacDades do some ripping jazz: two of the brothers did jazz degrees at uni, and can’t help themselves. I think Junior plays one of Phil Hardy’s low D’s, with range up to the fourth octave. He told me he liked it ‘up there’ because he could cross-finger any chomatic.
If, by ‘contemporary’, one means John Tesh and New Age, then I’ve got some skinny ties, spandex, and hair-mousse to sell you.
Hi bfloyd-----shoner mentioned Flook. If you go to this webpage:
http://www.kerrywhistles.com/dl.php?group=4#
you can watch a number of little videos of Flook. Brian Finnegan is the whistle player. The woman with the accordion (in the first video) is Sarah Allen who is also an extremely accomplished flute player who sometimes stands on one leg while playing the flute 
. John Jo Kelly is the bodhran player and is of the top rank as well. I am one who prefers the real traditional music, but I got to see Flook in person and I must say I was absolutely blown away. They were very charming toward the audience.
I’ll second this recommendation. http://www.themcdades.com has, right from the flash intro, a good sampling of their stuff. Jeremiah McDade is their whistler (occasional soprano sax, too), and when I saw him live he was honking the snot out of a Burke Al A. I’ve also spotted this group on CBC the past couple of Christmases (“Christmas across Canada” or something to that effect) where Miah’s been playing Susatos (high D, maybe a C) too.
Neat stuff. You can really tell that those two brothers, on whistle and standup base, have jazz roots.
Jef
Actually, I understand that jazz is the branches, trad is the roots for these folks. Papa plays everything, though.