Ormonde Waters

Ormonde Waters is regarded as one of the international community's finest Irish musicians. Performing on the concertina, uilleann pipes, warpipes, tin whistles and low whistle, he has played internationally both solo and with various groups at festivals, schools and private functions and has been involved with over a dozen recording projects to date with artists such as "Fling" and Kavisha Mazzella.

Career highlights include playing before 10,000 for the opening of the Festival of Perth in 1979 as part of WA's 150th anniversary celebrations, the launch of the "Greenpeace II" at the Isle of Dogs (1989), the international premier of "The Field" in London (1990) and numerous festivals including the Fleadh Nua in Ennis (Ireland, 1989), Jersey International Festival (1990), Carrigaholt (Ireland 1996), Wehrheim Festival (Germany, 1996) and Waihi Bush Festival (New Zealand, 1998).

He also toured England and Ireland for six months in 1990 with the Age Exchange Theatre Company performing in their play "Across the Irish Sea". With the "Fling" he has appeared at every major Australian festival and in 1997 toured for four weeks in China and Singapore. In 1998 he toured with "Fling" for seven weeks to Singapore, Ireland and the UK culminating in a performance before 20,000 at Fairport Convention's Cropredy Festival, and followed by a six week tour of seven countries in Asia. He also arranged the pipe music for the Fremantle Dockers Centenary football match and conducted the pipe bands to a crowd of 25,000.

Ormonde made a significant contribution to WA Irish music history when he researched the life of John Wayland - the Founder of the Cork Pipers' Club - who migrated to WA in 1912. He formed the John Wayland Society to raise funds for a headstone for Wayland's grave, published his research in "The Traditional Musicianer", Australia's first Irish music publication, and organised an Irish Music festival in Geraldton to comemorate the 40th anniversary of Wayland's death, when the new headstone was unveiled.

Ormonde holds a Bachelor of Economics with Honours in Industrial Relations from UWA (1985) and a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Molecular Biology from Murdoch University (2004). He was the winner of the 2000 Emrys Grimley Memorial Prize in Biological Sciences, one of the recipients of the Vice-Chancellor's Commendation for Academic Excellence in 2000, 2001 and 2002, winner of the 2002 AMGEN prize for Biotechnology, and the 2003 Conservation Biology Prize.

Discography:
1978 "Celtic Spectacular" 12th National Folk Festival, Fremantle
1978 "Eighth WA Folk Festival" Toodyay
1981 "WA Bush Bands Album" RABBIT'S EARS
1982 "The Midnight Cry" John Reed & Louisa Myers
1992 Out of the Kitchen demo tape
1994 "Pressed at Clancy's" PRESS GANG
1994 HOBO demo tape
1994 "Sweet Life" FLING
1995 "Mad Dog Morgan" Tim Lambert & Roger Montgomery
1996 "Mermaids in the Well" Kavisha Mazzella
1997 "Live at Fairbridge" FLING
1997 "Peeler & the Goat" FLING
1997 Nancy Bannister demo tape
1998 "Face the Music" Icon Music
1998 WAMI Compilation Album of Original WA Bands - FLING
1999 "Miles to Go" David Hyams
1999 AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top" for the Fremantle Dockers 100th football match
1999 WAMI Compilation Album of Original WA Bands - FLING
2000 "Walk the Great Divide" - Jim Fisher
2000 "Wrapping Arms" - Jade Bailey
2000 "Sweet Emptiness" - Madhuro
2001 The Fiddling Accountant - Live at Fairbridge - Demo CD
2002 Tatterjack - demo CD
2002 "Cinquante" - David Ralph
2002 "Feather's and Tributes" - Bernard Carney
2002 - Geoff & Margaret Morgan
2004 - "Shadow of Sound" - Mark Wright

References and Links

thegoodear - from which all of the above comes

Freotopia

This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 25 April, 2021 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/watersormonde.html (it was last updated on 17 March, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.