The Festival’s first three decades
In 1994 the then Armagh City & District Council announced the Armagh Together Festival, with the aim of reinforcing community spirit in the Council area. Armagh Pipers Club Director of Music Eithne Vallely proposed an event commemorating the piper and master craftsman William Kennedy, who was born in Tandragee in 1768. Kennedy’s name had been largely forgotten in his home country, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries the inspirational story of this remarkable blind genius was celebrated in schoolbooks, magazines and newspapers in Ireland, Britain and as far away as Italy, Germany, France, Australia and North, Central and South America. His contribution to the piping world was his modernisation of the bellows-driven pastoral or union pipes, giving him a credible claim to be the inventor of today’s uilleann pipes – though he also sought to improve the Highland bagpipes.
The first Kennedy Festival was therefore based on the piping traditions of Ireland and Scotland, reflecting the Pipers Club’s philosophy that the music of both countries is the shared heritage of us all. It proved such a success that, by popular demand, the Club immediately began organising a second festival for the following year.
From this the festival grew organically, bringing in representatives of other bagpiping traditions from Europe and further afield. It gradually became the single most important international festival of all forms of pipe-based music, reaching out across five continents to welcome pipers and pipe enthusiasts from all over the world.
The organisation of the Festival has largely been the work of volunteers, with Club founder Brian Vallely the unpaid festival director for many years, helped more recently by his son Caoimhin in the role of Artistic Director with Club secretary Ciarán Ó Maoláin co-ordinating the administration and liaising with funders. For the 2026 revival, the Club’s newly-appointed co-ordinator, Tiarnán Ó Duinnchinn – himself a piper of some renown – will be in the driving seat.
Festival Musicians
Over its 30 years the William Kennedy Piping Festival brought to Armagh over 1,100 musicians from countries as diverse as Iran, Algeria, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Canada, Brazil, the USA, Hungary, Belarus, Croatia, Macedonia, Italy, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Japan, Luxembourg, Romania and Greece, as well as Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. From within those countries the festival featured many unique piping traditions: from Italy it presented pipers from Piedmont, Sicily, Sardinia and Southern Italy. Spain was another country with a rich piping tradition and Armagh had representatives of the distinctive piping genres of Galicia, Asturias, Catalonia and Mallorca, with the northern and southern regions of the Basque Country also featured. A big input came from France, which has been described as the heartland of piping, with no fewer than 14 historic piping traditions represented including the well-known Breton pipes and the lesser-known instruments of Burgundy, Gascony, the Massif Central, Corsica and the Occitan region.
The festival’s initial emphasis was on solo unaccompanied piping, featuring some of the most high-profile piping legends such as Kathryn Tickell playing the Northumbrian pipes, maestro Luigi Lai from Sardinia playing the launeddas, and the renowned gaitero José Manuel Tejedor of Asturias. It subsequently featured other instruments and pipe-based groups, from the never-to-be-forgotten duet of Catherine Ennis on the organ with Liam O’Flynn playing uilleann pipes, to internationally famous groups such as Lúnasa and Capercaillie. Another initiative was to include Highland pipe bands, beginning with local All-Ireland Grade 2 champions the Killeen Pipe Band, and multiple Grade 1 World champions, the Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band.
Many artists returned again and again: those who performed in 10 or more editions of the Festival included Anxo Lorenzo of Galicia, Ailean Domhnallach (Allan Mac Donald) from the Western Highlands of Scotland, Angus MacKenzie of Cape Breton and Skye, and Irish musicians Barry Kerr, Sinéad Lennon Walsh, CaoimhÃn Vallely, Mick O’Brien, Brian Vallely, Jarlath Henderson, Niall Vallely, Éamonn Curran, Tiarnán Ó Duinnchinn and Cillian Vallely.
Composers & Arrangers
The Festival also hosted the work of composers and arrangers such as MÃcheál Ó Suilleabháin, Lorcán Mac Mathúna, Niall Vallely and Dónal O’Connor. Mac Mathúna premiered his ‘Book of Leinster’ composition while Niall Vallely premiered his ‘Singing Stream’, a composition for four uilleann pipes. Ó Suilleabháin brought the Irish Chamber Orchestra to perform along with musicians from the Armagh Pipers Club in an original composition inspired by the influence of the 18th century Italian composer and violinist Francesco Geminiani, whose work had influenced the Irish harper Turlough O’Carolan. (Geminiani had moved to Dublin in 1759, dying there in 1762.) O’Connor arranged the unique ‘Song of the Chanter’ four-part arrangement for 45 uilleann pipes to celebrate the 45th Anniversary of Armagh Pipers Club in 2011. Another initiative was the Mark Donnelly Academy of Piping, supported by the family of Mark Donnelly, a pipe tutor in the club who died at a young age in 1999. The Academy acquired an international dimension with students coming from all over the world to experience tuition with renowned uilleann pipers such as Mick O’Brien, Cillian Vallely and Pádraig McGovern.
Lectures
Central to the William Kennedy Festival over the years has been the Lecture series celebrated in the publishing of a compilation of lectures selected from some 54 delivered during the first 25 years of the festival. With the help of live recordings made by the Irish Traditional Music Archive, there have been compilation CDs featuring Festival music selected by Caoimhin Vallely.
The festival has received many accolades over the years including the Irish Music Magazine ‘Best Festival’ award.
Recent Years
The Festival had to take a break in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, but returned in 2021 – on a smaller scale than in previous years, to ensure public safety. The 2022 and 2023 editions were considerably larger, with over 40 musicians taking part, and the 2024 Festival had a similar number, bringing in a number of previous Festival favourites and a few first-timers who caught our attention over recent years. Eleven of those named above were making their first WKPF appearance, while the others have racked up 179 between them! Over its 30 years the Festival has featured – we think – 1,146 individuals, making a total of 2,304 appearances.
The WKPF received consistent support over the years from Armagh City & District Council and later Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council, but only intermittent and variable support from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Smaller but much-appreciated support came from the Armagh business community, and other donors and supporters. In the absence of sufficient public funding the Club itself became a major funder, with up £20,000 annually expended from its own reserves. Following the 2024 edition, Armagh Pipers Club took the difficult decision to terminate the Festival, which had consumed a large amount of the charity’s resources and had never attracted adequate external funding. For 2026, we hope to keep the deficit on a more manageable scale.
The William Kennedy Piping Festival returns in November 2026!
Armagh Pipers Club has listened to the global community of pipers and piping enthusiasts and has resurrected the William Kennedy Piping Festival, having reluctantly ended its 30-year run in 2024. In November 2025 the Club presented a smaller-scale William Kennedy Weekend, centred on a concert with the supergroup Lúnasa, supported by José Manuel Tejedor (from Asturias) and Sébastien Lagrange and Gaël Rutkowski (France). There were also many pub, hotel and youth sessions, and a lecture. With 2026 marking the 60th year of the Club’s tireless promotion of piping and traditional music in general, it seems right to revive the famous mid-November celebration of all forms of pipe-based music. Our one-off logo for 2026 features a piping phoenix!
With the Club’s management having just undergone a change in personnel, planning for the Festival is still incomplete, but the shape of the weekend is now clear. There will be four public concerts: one in honour of our late Musical Director, Eithne Vallely, which will mark the Club’s 60th anniversary with performances by a selection of the most talented alumni of its teaching programme; a concert featuring up-and-coming stars of piping; the main Saturday night concert, featuring a range of groups and soloists from around the world; and, for the purists, a concert with some of the best uilleann pipers around. There will also be a return of the Mark Donnelly Academy of Piping, with a panel of top-class musicians providing expert tuition to pipers who are already at an advanced level. In addition to the teaching sessions, the Academy will also feature two events open to the public: a lecture by Peter Browne, and a presentation on the music of Nova Scotia featuring three great musicians. A special concert will be offered to local schools, and of course there will be the usual trail of sessions in Aonach Mhacha (Armagh’s cultúrlann, where the Pipers Club is based) and the Hole in the Wall Bar, the Charlemont Arms Hotel and the adjacent Turner’s Bar.
With a little work still to be completed around contracting artists and setting up a booking system, please return to this page in a week or two for more detailed information
William Kennedy
William Kennedy, after whom the Festival was named, was a blind craftsman from Tandragee, near Armagh, who lived from 1768 to 1834. He made several important innovations in the design of uilleann pipes. His biography forms a chapter of The William Kennedy Lectures, a collection of 19 essays based on lectures presented during the first 25 Festivals. The book can be ordered from our online shop.