Tom Downes

Teaches at Irish Arts Center

Tom Downes has been involved with the Irish Arts Center since 1972. He was a performer in some of our earliest theatrical productions and has been teaching bagpipes here for about 15 years. Tom grew up in Brooklyn in the 1950s with parents from musical families in West Limerick. Learning music at the piano from age seven, his love of traditional Irish music led him to focus on the bagpipes under the tutelage of the County Tyrone Association band, eventually directing the band as Pipe Major. Tom has enjoyed a 35-year career as a bilingual guidance counselor in the NYC public schools and for years was an adjunct evening instructor in music at St.John's University. He has taught piping to other bands and organizations, also playing uillean pipes, tin whistle and low whistle. Several of his students have gone on to lead bands and to use Tom's original music and arrangements. Tom has made a lifelong effort to collect, research, and adapt traditional Irish music for the bagpipe. He still performs regularly and has been a part of recordings, TV shows and live concerts. Favorite projects include playing solo pipes for Seamus Heaney's reading of his own poems in a dramatic presentation directed by Derek Wolcott at the 92nd Street Y.