Eliot Grasso

Baltimore native and Oregon resident, Eliot Grasso, hails from a long line of familial musicians. He began playing Irish traditional music on the flute at age seven, tin whistle at age eight, and uilleann pipes at age eleven, his earliest exposure including the music of The Chieftains and The Bothy Band. In January of 1995, Eliot began studying rudimentary piping technique with Paul Levin and later that year, began studying advanced piping technique with Na Píobairí Uilleann instructor, Kieran O'Hare. Other major influences on his playing include Robbie Hannan and Seán Og Potts. Since 1996, Eliot has won regional and international first, second, and third place titles at the New York Fleadh Cheoil and Ireland’s International Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in both the uilleann pipes and tin whistle divisions.

Eliot has performed at the Kennedy Center with Liz Carroll, Constitution Hall, the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall with The Chieftains, the Library of Congress, the National Building Museum, the National Geographic Concert Hall, and the home of the Irish Ambassador. In addition, Eliot has performed for the National Heritage Awards, Island, the Washington Cathedral Art Symposium, The American Ireland Fund, and has entertained President and Mrs. Clinton at the National Endowment for the Arts Awards in Constitution Hall. At the conclusion of the 1998 Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, Eliot performed alongside other All-Ireland champions in a concert for Irish President, Mary Robinson.

Firmly dedicated to teaching, Eliot has been invited to teach at numerous festivals including the Catskills Irish Arts Week, Augusta Irish Week, Zoukfest, and tionóil in Belfast, Germany, Dublin, Limerick, Chicago, Baltimore, New York, Seattle, and Denver.

Since 1999, he has performed as a soloist in Patrick Cassidy’s orchestral work, Famine Remembrance, with members of the Washington Chamber Symphony under the direction of Elaine Rendler and Stephen Simon’s Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel with the Harrisburg Symphony under the baton of the composer.

In May 2004, Eliot was invited to perform on National Public Radio through “A Prairie Home Companion” with host Garrison Keillor where he was honored with the Ray Marklund Award for amiable stage presence. Additional live radio broadcasts include Radio Telefís Éireann’s “The Rolling Wave,” presented by Peter Browne, “The Edge On Folk,” hosted by Steve Edge and broadcast from the University of British Columbia, “The Long Acre,” hosted by Cindy Reich and broadcast from Ft. Collins, Colorado, and “Our Saturday Tradition,” broadcast from Bellevue, Washington.

Eliot has been the recipient of the Rosenberg Scholarship for the Arts four times for piano performance and has been twice honored with the Frankie Kennedy Memorial Scholarship to fund music studies in Ireland. Eliot holds a BA in music from Goucher College and a Masters Degree in Ethnomusicology from the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick where he also taught uilleann pipes, tin whistle, and music theory. Upon arriving in Ireland, Eliot was honored with a commission from Na Píobairí Uilleann to record and produce an album of solo piping for the club’s catalogue which was released in 2007. He is currently attending the University of Oregon where he is pursuing doctoral studies in musicology under the auspices of a Graduate Teaching Fellowship. Additionally, Eliot is on the music faculty at the John G. Shedd Institute for the Arts.

Recently, Eliot presented on recording issues with uilleann pipers at the Fourth Annual Art of Record Production Conference in Boston and on melodic variation in traditional music at the Northwest Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology at the University of Washington in Seattle.