Christopher Layer

As a teacher of the flute and pipes, Layer has worked for Scotland’s Feis Na Gael in the Scottish Hebrides, The Augusta National Heritage Center, The Hamish Moore School of Piping, and countless workshops at music festivals the world over.

Over the last fourteen years, Chris has toured four continents with the Trinity Irish Dance Company as their principal pipe soloist and flautist. His father is traditional fiddle great, Edwin Layer, and mother, soprano Dolores Layer. He played his first professional engagement at the tender age of 11. Since then, he has gone on to great success in the worlds of traditional and classical music at home and abroad. Since 2003, Chris has been the Artist-In-Residence for the Moab Music Festival in Moab, Utah, teaching there for ten weeks each year, and is the creator of the Moab Community Dance Band in that rural community.

Recently, Layer contributed his arrangements of original and traditional music to the New York Theater’s production of “Twelfth Night” for Shakespeare In The Park in NYC, performing onstage with the company.

As a sideman, he has toured, performed, and recorded with many talents in traditional, classical and modern music. Here are just a few of his musical friends: Éric Beaudry, Susie Petrov, David Amram, Brendan O’Shea, Cillian Valelly, Ivan Goff, Issac Alderson,Cathie Ryan, Hanneke Cassell, Natalie Haas, Laura Risk, Liz Carroll, Rodney Miller, Tony DeMarco, Dennis Cahill, Tracy Schwarz, Pete Sutherland, Tim Britton, Jerry O’Sullivan, Mel Mericer, Danny Noveck, Greg Liszt, Hamish Moore, Dougie Pincock, Margaret MacArthur, Eric Beaudry, Andre Marchand, Grey Larsen, Jack Coen, Eamon O’Leary, Andy McGann, Alasdair Fraser, Matt Munisteri, Butch Thompson, and Paul Woodiel. In 2014 and 2015, Chris was a member of the orchestra for Sting’s Broadway musical, “The Last Ship”.