He's also an award-winning author of poetry, fiction, plays and musical instructional books — as well as a popular presenter of workshops in music performance and composition, folklore, playwriting, songwriting and creative writing. To date, he's written 18 books of original children's plays and stories for leading educational publisher Smith & Kraus, Inc. — 393 plays, stories and monologues performed in schools and youth theatres across the nation! Check out L.E. McCullough's literary links on this site here.
 

Contact Information Postal address  P.O. Box 352 Woodbridge, NJ 07095   Electronic mail  General Information: feadaniste@aol.com

***  L.E. McCullough Career Résumé ***  Children's Play Synopses ***  Adult Play Synopses

            Trained as a youth in classical piano and jazz saxophone, the Indianapolis native took up the study of Irish traditional music on the flute and tinwhistle in July, 1972; after living in Ireland for a year and studying at the School of Irish Studies in Dublin, where he received a solid grounding in the music's scholarship from renowned folklorists Brendan Breathnach, Tom Munnelly, Hugh Shields, Sean Ó Súilleabhain, Richard O'Beirne and fiddler-seannchai John Kelly. 

            Once back in America, he learned the fine points of the music from several of the best Irish musicians living in America during the 1970s -- Seamus Cooley, John McGreevy, Paddy Cronin, Noel Rice, Joe Shannon, John Vesey, Andy McGann, Jimmy and Eleanor Neary, Sean McGlynn and Joe Burke and began to establish an international reputation as a young player of note. 

            In 1974 and '75, McCullough won First Place in the Midwestern U.S. Fleadh Ceoil for Senior Tinwhistle; in 1975 he was runner-up in the Senior Tinwhistle Competition at the All-Ireland Fleadh Ceoil in Buncrana, Donegal. At the All-Ireland competitions in Buncrana the following year, he won the 1976 New Dance Tunes Composition category. 

            McCullough's passion for Irish music led him to extend his activities into the scholastic realm. From 1974-78, with fiddler Miles Krassen and mandolinist Mick Moloney, he traveled across the U.S. recording Irish musicians for projects funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council and Pennsylvania Council for the Arts, turning his collection over to the Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music and contributing material issued by Rounder Records on two LPs. In 1976 he received an NEA grant to document the craft of 80-year-old Chicago uilleann pipemaker Patrick Hennelly, at the time the last remaining maker of Irish bagpipes in the U.S. 

            In 1976 McCullough wrote The Complete Irish Tinwhistle Tutor, a highly acclaimed instructional manual now distributed by Music Sales, Inc. From 1977-86 McCullough operated Silver Spear Publications, a book publishing company devoted to issuing Irish music instruction books and tapes. His book/CD publication, 121 Favorite Irish Session Tunes, was produced by uilleann piper Patrick Sky and is distributed by Homespun Tapes, who issued McCullough's instructional video, Learn to Play Irish Tinwhistle in 1996. McCullough's book of 61 original Irish traditional compositions, St. Patrick Was a Cajun, was released by Ossian Publications in 1997. 

            Throughout the 1970s McCullough wrote dozens of articles on Irish music for academic and popular journals, including the entry on "American Irish Music" in the New Groves Dictionary of U.S. Music, 1986 edition. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1978 by authoring the first dissertation-level analysis of Irish traditional music ever published, Irish Music in Chicago: An Ethnomusicological Study.

            McCullough's chief involvement with Irish music has been in the area of performance, recording and touring during the past 20 years with a variety of groups including Trim the Velvet, Devilish Merry, Bourrée Texane, Money in Both Pockets and The Irish Airs. An accomplished performer on flute, tinwhistle, harmonica, alto sax, tenor sax, recorder, bodhran, bones, Irish bagpipes, piano, synthesizer, guitar and miscellaneous ethnic percussion, he has appeared on 33 albums for Angel/EMI, Sony Classical, RCA, Warner Brothers, Log Cabin, Kicking Mule, Rounder, Laserlight, Bluezette and other independent record labels with Irish, French, Cajun, Latin, blues, jazz, country, bluegrass and rock ensembles. 

            During the 1980s McCullough evolved into an inspired composer-arranger with a rare talent for shaping brand new genres based on traditional musical structures. His three solo albums -- His Own Kind, Late Bloomer, Feadanísta-- have spotlighted 33 of his own compositions while stretching accepted stylistic boundaries to create the fresh new musical hybrid of Celtic World Beat, an idiom critics have dubbed "the ultimate folk-fusion. . . multi-faceted, innovative, unorthodox, and slightly nefarious." 

       His Own Kind and Late Bloomer paired traditional Irish dance tunes and ballads with American rock, blues, jazz, folk and country riffs. With Feadanísta, McCullough expanded into a truly international dimension, leavening the Irish-Celtic base with heady doses of Mexican, Caribbean, African, French, Spanish and Cajun flavorings subtly seasoned with occasional hints of jazz, pop and ragtime. 

       Feadanístaalso made extensive use of state-of-the-art, computer-assisted studio technology. Every track featured MIDI-controlled synthesizer work, yet the electronics never detracted from the album's overall acoustic feel. The result was an album that flowed effortlessly through two dozen tunes and 42 minutes of music, taking the listener on an aural voyage spanning whole continents, cultures and centuries. 

            In the last decade McCullough has composed music for numerous broadcast commercials, PBS film scores and incidental theatre music including soundtracks for John Kane, A Place Just Right, Together Alone, Waiting for Godot, Story Theatre, Shadow of a Gunman, Consider This, Puppet Strings, The Greeks and Painting the Universe. He performs on the music soundtracks of Ken Burns's PBS television series, The West and Lewis & Clark: Journey of the Corps of Discovery and the Warner Brothers film Michael Collins.

            In 1993, with Indianapolis jazz musician T.H. Gillespie, McCullough composed the score to Connlaoi's Tale: The Woman Who Danced on Waves, a full-length Celtic Ballet choreographed by former Martha Graham soloist David Hochoy and hailed by critics as "a bold, shimmering fusion of myth, music and dance. .. . a thrilling voyage into the past and a fervent prayer for the future." In 1997 Gillespie and McCullough repeated their music/dance collaboration with Hochoy in the Celtic Ballet The Healing Cup: Guinevere Seeks the Grail, which explores the Celtic roots of Arthurian legend. In 1999 these works, along with Skin Walkers:The Incredible Voyage of Mael the Lotus Eater, were collected in a 73 minute CD titled Myths for a New Millennium.

            Though he ventured long ago into uncharted musical territory, McCullough has always maintained the highest respect for the great traditional musicians of Ireland. "Everything I know about Irish music I learned from listening to players like Willie Clancy, Seamus Ennis, Denis Murphy, Tommy Potts, John Kelly, Seamus Tansey, P.J. Hayes, Matt Molloy and records by legendary turn-of-the- century masters like Coleman, Morrison, Killoran and Tuohy. Yet each of these musicians, in their own way, were tremendously inventive, always pushing the limits of the idiom, always seeking a new way to bring the beauty and excitement of Irish music to more people all around the world." 

      That, in essence, is the prime musical directive L.E. McCullough has been following the last three decades. . . making an age-old tradition accessible to modern audiences, while infusing the contemporary music milieu with a much-needed dose of stylistic subtlety and melodic enchantment.