Bio: Skip Healy

Skip Healy

Skip Healy is widely regarded as one of world's finest fife and wooden flute players. He is based in Rhode Island and has performed throughout North America and in Europe at venues such as the Blarney Star (NYC), the Festival of Pipers (Quebec), the 700-year-old Pfyffer Dai (Ribeauville, France), Plough

and Stars (S.F.) and at numerous venues in Ireland, where he also has a home. He has been successful in competitions as well as on the concert stage. In 1980, he won both the Connecticut State and the Northeastern States Championships for solo fife playing. Concentrating on traditional Irish music, he also won numerous C.C.E. North American titles.

In 1989, Skip’s home state honored him with the title of "Master Musician for the State of Rhode Island." He then became

actively involved with the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Folk Arts Apprenticeship program, where he received

several grants to teach fife playing to local residents. A concert tour led him to Basel, Switzerland, where he taught

American fife and Irish flute for nearly a decade to scores of Swiss musicians. His reputation for unique teaching styles and

theories (private, group, and master class settings) has also grown over the last 20 years. Now a frequent lecturer at the

university level, Healy also hosts an annual wooden flute festival called Wind On The Bay in his hometown of East Greenwich.

Skip’s skills as a composer, arranger, and studio musician have long been in demand. Great Irish musicians including fiddler

Liz Carroll and Lawrence Nugent, as well as the group Solas, have recorded Skip's flute compositions. He has performed and

recorded with an all-star selection of traditional musicians including, Aine Minogue, Aoife Clancy, Flynn Cohen,

Johnny Cunningham, Michael and Triona O'Domhnaill, Robbie O'Connell, Mick Moloney, John Doyle, John Williams, Paddy Keenan,

Paddy Reynolds, Kevin Burke, Phillip Donnelly, Lui Collins, Rhode Island-based band Pendragon, and many others. In 2004, Skip

became an advisor to and occasional player with the Spirit of America Fife & Drum Corps at Epcot (Walt Disney World) Florida.

Skip Healy has played on over 40 recordings and hundreds of international radio and television shows. His solo recordings,

including Grammy-nominatedEmpty Pockets (1985), Live from New York (1987), and Farewell New England Shores (1991),

Purgatory Chasm (2001), and Have Ye This One? (2003) have won him both popular and critical acclaim. Most recently,

Skip formed The Cartel, a spirited band featuring Healy, Marc Bernier, Mark Poloka, and others. In 2006, The Cartel released

its first self-titled CD. Skip's recordings have been added to Ireland's TraditionalMusic Archive in Dublin.

In 1993, Skip founded the Healy Fife and Flute Company in East Greenwich,Rhode Island. He specializes in designing and

building a wide variety of wooden flutes, fifes, and piccolos, which he has supplied to musicians all over the world.

Skip Healy will be joined at Flute Fest by Berkeley-based guitarist and composer Michael Land.