…Or thereabouts

After a lot of thought I decided, for the moment to use this edited CV.
I’ve also constantly had issues with being put in a box, by which I mean the sometimes understandable tendency for people to assume that one can only be good at one thing, so recently I decided, in the course of making a few applications to present my CV in three sections Music/Performance, Academic, and Flutemaking as you’ll see below.

It makes sense to me…I hope it does to you.

Hammy Hamilton CV

1/ Music/Performance

Early Musical Experience…Private piano lessons around age 8
School choir from age 13-16. Sang tenor part in the madrigal group, and was understudy for the solo tenor part in a school production of Handel’s Messiah.
Took bassoon lessons briefly around age 14.
Began to take an interest in folksong inspired by Clancy Bros and Dubliners.
First public performance as a ”folk singer” at a school concert circa 1970.
All of the above was at Friend’s School Lisburn.

At Queen’s University Belfast… from 1971-76 I first began to perform regularly as a singer at the Folk Music Society’s meetings, and later as a singer and flute player at those meetings and also on the session scene in Belfast. My major influences at the time would have been singers such as Joe Holmes and Geordie Hanna, and on the instrumental side Cathal McConnell, and I was playing alongside other musicians such as Tara Bingham, Dermy Diamond, Andy Dixon, Desi Wilkinson, Frankie Kennedy and Gary Hastings among others.
I played for a time with the band Maggie’s Leap, with Andy Dixon and Deirdre Shannon on fiddles, Trevor Stuart on pipes and Ian Robinson on bodhrán. Our high point was supporting Paul Brady at a concert in the Whitla (now Mandela) Hall.

In 1976 I moved to Cork … in connection with research for my MA, and became involved in the very vibrant session scene there centred on the Phoenix Bar, and the box and fiddle duet of Jackie Daly and Seamus Creagh.
I supported myself for the first 4 months I was there by busking outside the English Market.
I later played flute for the Phoenix Ceili Band, at many dance gigs throughout Co. Cork.
In 1979 I moved from Cork city to the West Cork Gaeltacht village of Cúil Aodha, and set up the first professional workshop devoted to making simple system flutes for Irish music.

In the 1980s… as well as developing my instrument making business I played extensively, both in local pub gigs, as often as three nights a week,(notably with fiddle player Connie Connell in the Old Triangle, Macroom) but also began to be asked to do teaching/performance workshops, regularly in UCC Music Dept. from 1984-1996, also at such events as: Ballyshannon Folk Festival 1982, Cork folk Festival 1982 to date, Dublin Folk Festival 1987, Kilkenny Arts Fest 1988. I taught at Scoil Acla, and was director of the flute classes there from 1997- 2019.
Abroad, I can mention Lorient Fête Interceltique 1982, Fête de Cornuaille, Quimper 1983, Boxwood, Nova Scotia 2003, 2013. Newfoundland & Labrador Folk Festival 2003 2010 , Féile Seamus Creagh, St. John’s 2008, 2014, L’ Association Irland-Belgique 1996, 1997, 2005. Ceol Aneas New Zealand 2003.
There are many more, but the above are memorable ( to me!)

At home… I formed the Irish Parlour Trio with Paul Mc Grattan, flute and Con Ó Drisceoil, piano in 1986. In the 90s when I was spending a lot of time in Brittany, I formed a band, Geantraí, which toured festivals in Brittany over a period of about 5 years. Among others, the regular members of the band were Vincent Milne, fiddle, Aidan Coffey, box, Eoin ó Riabhaigh, pipes, myself on flute, and Tom Stevens on Guitar. I recorded a solo flute album, “The Moneymusk”á in 1990, and produced Conal Ó Gráda’s 1990 album, The Top of Coom. In 2001 I recorded the album “It’s No Secret” with Seamus Creagh and Con Ó Drisceoil. I’ve also recorded tracks on various flute playing compilation albums, most notably “An Gaoth Aduaidh “ a tribute album to the late Frankie Kennedy in 2004.
In 2013 I participated in a song project, “Man Woman + Child” involving singers and their interpretation of Child ballads which culminated in a concert in The National Library in Kildare street.
In 2006 I founded, along with my wife, a festival devoted to Irish traditional flute playing, Cruinniú na bhFliúit, which runs in the village of Baile Bhuirne every year in the week after Easter. Now in its 17th year, it has achieved a worldwide reputation, and its limited number of places sell out within hours of its launch each year.

I began experimenting with composition very early in my playing career, but have been extremely lucky that a few of my tunes have become very widespread in the oral tradition, notably the set of jigs “The Woodcock” and “The Kerfeunteun” also commonly known as “Hammy Hamilton’s Jigs”.

In September 2021 I was asked to be the featured composer for the Saothar  series by the ITMA.

2/Academic CV

Bsc (hons) in Physiology QUB 1974
MA in Ethnomusicology ( Dept. of social Anthropology) QUB 1978
It was in connection with my dissertation (The Session: A Socio-Musical Phenomenon in Irish Traditional Music) for this degree that I came to Cork in 1976
PhD in Ethnomusicology 1996. Begun in UCC, completed at UL. “The Role of Commercial Recordings in the Development of Irish Traditional Music 1899-1993”

Largely in connection with this research I wrote 16 conference papers, and in terms of other writing, contributed 11 entries to the 1999 ed. of “The Companion to Irish Traditional Music” (For which publication I also acted as an editorial consultant for Cork University Press), and 10 entries to the 2003 Encyclopedia of Ireland, on broad topics of Irish music.

During this period as well, I was active in the following committees and boards:-
The Crossroads Conference Dublin 1996 ( I was also an editor of its published Proceedings)
The Sean Ó Riada International Conference. UCC 1998
Irish Traditional Music Archive 2008-11 Board member.

Lecturer in Traditional Music, WIT 1990-1995

In 1995 I was a visiting Fulbright Scholar in the Dept. of Ethnomusicology at the University of California at Los Angeles

Since 1996 I have worked as an independent scholar in this area, and in recent years have been combining my work with historical restoration, with my long term interest in academic organology in researching the woodwind trade in Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries.

I currently have a commission from the ITMA to scope out musical instruments of Irish significance in private and Museum collections both in Ireland and abroad, which I hope will result in a publication at some point in the future.

3/ Flute making CV

I began experimenting with flute repair, and then flute making, very early in my playing career, stimulated by the necessity of maintaining a scarce and almost unobtainable instrument at the time. Spending a spell of a few months in Belfast in 1977, I received a grant from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland to investigate the possibility of making flutes suitable for traditional music, and given the use of a workshop, I produced my first prototype flute in that year.
In 1979 with grant aid from Údarás na Gaeltachta, I set up the first workshop devoted to making flutes for traditional music.
Up until the 1980s all Irish flute players were playing antique flutes, initially mainly from the German mass produced factories in Saxony, but by this stage increasingly using English, London made flutes. With the increase in formal performance and recording activity associated with the great expansion of interest in traditional music in this period difficulties began to emerge with the use of antique flutes, largely to do with pitch and tuning which were not suited to playing with modern tempered tuning instruments.
By the end of the 80s, the vast, vast, majority of Irish traditional flute players were playing newly made flutes provided by workshops like mine, which were beginning to spring up, not just in Ireland, but in the UK, U.S.A., and France.
Since then the world of the traditional flute has changed beyond recognition. The term “Irish Flute” first used in my 1990 publication “ The Irish Flute Player’s Handbook” has now universally become the standard term to refer to the simple system flute as used in Irish music, whether new or antique.
The use of antique flutes in performance is now almost obsolete.
I decided to close my order book in 2018, and when I had worked off the waiting list three years later, I had made in the region of 2,500 flutes which had been sold in 23 countries.
Currently I am working mostly in the area of historical restoration, an area which has fascinated me since the days when all players played old flutes and they had to be maintained.
I work for some of the major European collectors and players of period instruments, and am a member of the Galpin Society, which is the scholarly society for those interested in old musical instruments.
In 2012 I began a blog (.http://hammy-flutemaker.blogspot.com/ )which discusses many aspects of my life as a flute maker, restorer, and player. To date I’ve published 70 posts, which at this point have reached an audience of almost 100,000.

A few other things…

I wasn’t sure how to fit these points into my CV, which as you can see I’ve separated into three areas…Performance, Instrument making, and academic.

I was born in Belfast on the 16th March 1953, moved to Cork in 1976, married Nóirín Ní Thuama in 1979. We have two adult daughters and three grandchildren.

I am passionately interested in very many things…probably too many (but see below) mainly:
Natural history and the environment, fly fishing, self-sufficiency, politics and current affairs, history, (particularly 1798 where I have a personal connection,) Gardening, bibliophilia and bookbinding, cooking and food in general, and generally any rabbit hole that the above might lead to….including collecting: simple system flutes, Antique fly fishing reels, 19th C. 1st.ed. angling books.
Linguistics and word origins ( I speak French well enough to have taught in it, and after 40 years in the Gaeltacht have a good knowledge of Irish, but wouldn’t call myself fluent. I’m currently learning Spanish) knife making, tool making in general ( I made all the tools that I use in my bookbinding)…I could go on….but I’d better stop now…
One final aspect of my musical life, in fact my life in general I only became aware of in 2011 when I was diagnosed as being neurodivergent, initially in the form of ADD.
I don’t put this forward as an excuse for anything, because as I’m beginning to learn, it cuts both ways. It helps and it hinders. It destroys and it creates.
I’m sure this is a much more common experience than readily admitted, but I’m ready to share my experience with others who might be in the same position.