Tommy Keane was born in Waterford City. In his early twenties, after playing tin whistle for a couple of years, he met local piper Tommy Kearney who encouraged him to take up the uilleann pipes.  As well as this early tuition from Tommy Kearney, Tommy also attended the Willie Clancy Summer School where he learned further piping skills from Brian Gallagher, Pat Mitchell and Liam O’Flynn.  The recordings of Willie Clancy, Séamus Ennis and Tommy Reck also influenced his repertoire and style of playing.  

In the 1980s Tommy spent seven years in London where he played with many of the giants of Irish music including Tommy McCarthy, Bobby Casey and Roger Sherlock.  Since 1987 he has lived in Co. Galway where he teaches traditional music.  His solo album “The Piper’s Apron “ was released in 1991 and in 1995 a duet album “The Wind among the Reeds” with his wife, concertina player Jacqueline McCarthy.  

Tommy is featured with Liam O’Flynn and Ronan Browne on Volume 1 of Na Píobairí Uilleann’s DVD series “Piper’s Choice” - released in in 2008.  He was Chairman of Na Píobairí Uilleann for five years until 2018, after which he was appointed Honorary President.

Pádraic Keane hails from Maree, Co. Galway and was born into a great musical family. His father Tommy is a well known piper and his mother Jacqueline McCarthy is a very respected concertina player.  Pádraic is a tutor at many music festivals in Ireland and abroad. inclduing at the 2024 Ferryside Festival. 

In 2011 he was awarded TG4 Young Musician of the Year. He has toured America as a soloist with The Irish Chamber Orchestra and has collaborated with Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, The RTE Concert and Symphony Orchestras as well as various string quartets. He has also toured Europe with Ragús and worked with Galway's Irish language theatre group - An Taibhdhearc. He has featured on a number of albums including "The Rolling Wave" - a CD of young pipers issued by Na Píobairí Uilleann, "Tunes in the Church" and "Rogha Raelach" issued by Raelach Records. He has also performed at The Masters of Tradition festival held in Bantry House and curated by Martin Hayes. He recently released his acclaimed solo piping album entitled 'In Full Tune'.

Debbie Quigley was born in Newtownards, County Down and lived during the early 70s in the town of Bangor where she was first introduced to traditional music. Charlie Ferguson, a whistle and flute player also from Bangor, was a huge influence on her music during these formative years. 

She later emigrated to Toronto, Canada where in the late 1980s she began learning uilleann pipes from the late Chris Langan,  a piper piper and pipe maker originally from Rush, County Dublin who lived for many years in Toronto. Deb credits much of her music to the patient, and informative teaching style of her mentor and friend.

Debbie has performed and taught across Canada, the US and Ireland. In 2006 she released a self titled CD with guitartist Martin Gould. In 2025 she was included on the collection Mná Na bPíob Uilleann, vol II, a collection of women uilleann pipers produced by Na Piobairi Uilleann.

Emmett Gill has been playing the uilleann pipes from an early age. He began piping at the London Pipers’ Club in Camden Town learning from Billy Browne and John Murphy. 

Emmett has regularly taught and performed across Europe and North America, and has made two recordings, The Mountain Groves, a collection of solo piping in 2007, and The Rookery, with fiddle player Jesse Smith in 2012. He has also appeared on DVD Pipers Choice, Volume 2. 

In addition to bis musical talents, Emmett is Archivist and Deputy CEO at Na Píobairí Uilleann in Dublin and is co-founder/co-owner OldTime Records, through which he has produced several CD collections of old 78rpm recordings of Irish tratditional music. 

Ceri Rhys Matthews has been called "a key figure in the renaissance of Welsh musical traditions” and been described as "a one-man Welsh music industry". He plays traditional and newly composed dance melodies and airs from south and west Wales and is well-known as both a solo performer and as a member of the Welsh folk group, Fernhill. 

Born and bred in the Welsh speaking village of Treboeth outside Swansea, Ceri plays the wooden concert flute, pibgorn & bagpipes, and guitar, and sings traditional songs in Welsh and English. He has produced twenty-one CDs for Welsh label Fflach's subsidiary fflach:tradd and in 2009 produced Blodeugerdd: Song of the Flowers - An Anthology of Welsh Music and Song for Smithsonian Folkways, named Best World Traditional Album in the 2009 Independent Music Awards. 

In 2021, Ceri released his most recent album, Y Gwythienne, a selection of dance tunes from the Swansea repertory from 1717 to the present day performed on solo flute. 

Mikey Kenney is a passionate and well-respected advocate for traditional music. A brilliant Liverpool-style fiddler who draws primarily on his native North West English and Irish heritage, he is also known as a singer, songwriter and composer. 

Mikey is hailed by many as an important conduit of learning, conserving and handing down both English and Irish traditional fiddle music in England's Northwest while also composing new music.  He is no stranger to Ferryside, having taught fiddle at the 2023 festival, as well as popping in occassionally to play a few tunes in our local pub. 

As described by one writer "Mikey Kenney is a rare gem...there are few people who seem to embody traditional music in quite the same way. He’s like a walking tune book, and his dedication to keeping the old music of his native Lancashire alive is something to be cherished...Surely born in the wrong era, there’s a wide-eyed wonder about him, and a sense that he was left on this planet to roam and soak up as many musical traditions as he possibly can."  

Based in Chester (just over the border from north Wales), Chris Coe is a talented pipemaker and reedmaker with a reputation for detailed, beautiful craftsmanship.  Chris is a regular contributor to Na Piobairi Uilleann's PipeCraft pipemaking programme both as an instructor and as a creator of technical drawings of historic sets of pipes.