Bio
Ohio native Tim Benson is a musician, composer, craftsman, and teacher specializing in Irish uilleann bagpipes. Tim's musical journey began early in life, but began to flourish in his teenage years. Over the course of three years in the 1990s, Tim's family hosted three young students from Northern Ireland as part of the Ulster Project. It was during these years that Tim learned about the uilleann bagpipes. The uilleann pipes are a rare, bellows-blown instrument developed during the 1700s in the heyday of bagpipe entertainment culture of Ireland, Scotland, and England.
Tim's family was very encouraging when it came to learning the pipes. As fortune would have it, an Irish man named Michael Kilbane of Achill Island, Co. Mayo was teaching the instrument in nearby Lakewood, Ohio. Tim began tin whistle lessons with Michael while he awaited his first set of pipes, which took over a year to build.
In the following years, Tim made three trips to Ireland, both to visit his Ulster Project friends in Belfast, but also to attend uilleann pipe classes at Scoil Acla on Mr. Kilbane's home island, Achill. Achill Island is partly a Gaeltacht, which is an Irish (Gaeilge) speaking area.
Tim moved to Cincinnati to attend university and later graduated with distinction, earning a bachelor of science in Independent Studies: The History of Scientific Reasoning. During his time in Cincinnati, Tim adopted virtuoso uilleann piper Kieran O'Hare as a close mentor and friend. Kieran had just returned from attending Trinity College in Dublin where he was an uilleann pipes instructor at Na Piobairi Uilleann. Kieran became Tim's most influential teacher.
After graduating in 2005, Tim lived in Chicago with the great Mallow, Co. Cork fiddler John Daly, absorbing the rich community of Irish traditional music among the many talented artists living in the windy city at the time. Tim eventually settled in Western New York, learning to make uilleann pipes under the frequent advisement of the world's finest living pipe maker, David Quinn. David lived only two exits up the New York State Thruway from Tim (two exits in New York State… only a two hour drive.)
Since 2006, Tim has made uilleann pipes for customers all over the world - from Russia, to Europe, to China, and to Australia. In 2009, Tim travelled to New York City to measure a keyless boxwood student chanter made in 1938 by famed Irish pipe maker Leo Rowsome. The instrument currently belongs to Cillian Vallely of Lunasa. The boxwood Rowsome chanter became the principle chanter Tim based his design on.
Tim was a seasoned performer at age 20, having performed with the Akron Ohio Symphony, the Cincinnati Pops, the Chieftains, and an endless array of small ensembles throughout the midwestern USA and Ireland. Tim started touring the United States and Canada in 2014 with the PBS television special Christmas with the Celts. Tim later performed with the Nashville Celts, notably at the Grand Ole Opry along side Vince Gill, Loretta Lynn, Rickie Skaggs, and Heehaw comedian Mike Schneider.
For the last 25 years, Tim has taught uilleann pipes, tin whistle, concert flute, and uilleann pipe reedmaking to students privately, as a workshop leader, and as a faculty member of the Riley School of Irish Music, The East Coast Tionol, The Alaska Fiddle Camp, The Comhaltas Ceoiltoiri Eireann North American Convention, and currently at the Buffalo Academy of Irish Music. Tim was the uilleann pipes presenter and performer at the American Folklore Society Convention in 2018 and will participate in the New York State Arts Council Culture, Community, and the Classroom project beginning in January of 2026.
Tim is an avid composer, as well as a multi-instrumentalist, playing the fiddle, the wooden flute, electric guitar, and keyboards. Tim uses multitrack recording software to produce complex and layered arrangements featuring pipes, flutes, guitars, keyboards, and drums. He has recorded two full length albums of all original music (Brickhouse Corners [2019] and Scarlet Sunrise [2022]), fusing the sounds of uilleann pipes into contemporary music. Tim's compositions are regularly choreographed by the Rochester-based contemporary dance troupe ROCeltic led by Briana Blair Kelly. Recent performances include the Niagara University Dance Theater production of Coming Back Home, the Rochester Fringe Festival, and the Genesee Country Village Celtic Faire.