Frankie Gavin is a

fiddle player The following lists of violinists are available: * List of classical violinists, notable violinists from the baroque era onwards * List of contemporary classical violinists, notable contemporary classical violinists * List of violinist/compose ...

of traditional

Irish music Irish music is music that has been created in various genres on the island of Ireland. The indigenous music of the island is termed Irish traditional music. It has remained vibrant through the 20th and into the 21st century, despite globalis ...

Early years

Frankie Gavin was born in 1956 in

Corrandulla Corrandulla () is a small village and census town in County Galway, Ireland. It is located in the civil parishes in Ireland, civil parish of Annaghdown. Corrandulla was designated as a census town by the Central Statistics Office (Ireland), Cent ...

County Galway "Righteousness and Justice" , anthem = () , image_map = Island of Ireland location map Galway.svg , map_caption = Location in Ireland , area_footnotes = , area_total_km2 = ...

, from a musical family; his parents and siblings being players of the fiddle and

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

. As a child he played the

tin whistle The tin whistle, also called the penny whistle, is a simple six-holed woodwind instrument. It is a type of fipple flute, putting it in the same class as the recorder, Native American flute, and other woodwind instruments that meet such criteria. ...

from the age of four and, later, the flute. He received some formal training in music, but his musical ability on the fiddle is mainly self-taught. When 17 years old, he gained first place in both the All Ireland Under-18 Fiddle and Flute competitions.

Music career

Frankie Gavin with De Dannan, Trowbridge Folk Festival 1985

In the early 1970s Gavin played musical sessions at Galway's Cellar Bar, with

Alec Finn Alexander J. Phinn (4 June 1944 – 16 November 2018), known professionally as Alec Finn, was a British-born traditional musician who is famous for his unique style of accompaniment on the bouzouki. He was best known for founding De Dannan in 1974 ...

(

bouzouki The bouzouki (, also ; el, μπουζούκι ; alt. pl. ''bouzoukia'', from Greek ), also spelled buzuki or buzuci, is a musical instrument popular in Greece. It is a member of the long-necked lute family, with a round body with a flat top and ...

, guitar), Mickey Finn (

fiddle A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, th ...

Charlie Piggott Charlie Piggott (born 14 July 1948) is an Irish traditional musician, best known as a founding member of De Dannan and has toured extensively in Europe, Canada, and the US. He grew up playing music in County Cork, where his first instrument was ...

(

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

), and Johnnie (Ringo) McDonagh ( bodhrán). In 1974, from these and further sessions, he founded the group

De Dannan De Dannan (originally ''Dé Danann'') is an Irish folk music group. It was formed 1975 by Frankie Gavin ( fiddle), Alec Finn (guitar, bouzouki), Johnny "Ringo" McDonagh (bodhrán) and Charlie Piggott ( banjo) as a result of sessions in Hughe ...

with

. When De Dannan split-up in 2003, Gavin founded a new group, Frankie Gavin and The New De Dannan, which led to an acrimonious exchange between Gavin and Finn. In a Hot Press interview, Alec Finn noted that the new group was not De Dannan and that he himself, Alec Finn, had registered the De Dannan name after the split in 2003. Gavin has played and recorded with Andy Irvine, The Rolling Stones,

Elvis Costello Declan Patrick MacManus Order of the British Empire, OBE (born 25 August 1954), known professionally as Elvis Costello, is an English singer-songwriter and record producer. He has won multiple awards in his career, including a Grammy Award in ...

, Stéphane Grappelli, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and in 2010 became reputedly the fastest fiddle-player in the world, with an entry in the

Guinness Book of Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

.The Irish Times: Musician plays his way into records books
retrieved 27 February 2011

Selected discography

;Solo * ''Up and Away'' (1995) * ''Frankie Gavin'' (1997) * ''Frankie Goes to Town'' (1999) * ''Shamrocks & Holly: An Irish Christmas Celebration'' (1999) * ''Fierce Traditional'' (2001) ;With Alec Finn * ''Frankie Gavin & Alec Finn'' (1977) * ''Traditional Irish Music on Fiddle and Bouzouki, Volume II'' (2018) ;With Andy Irvine * ''Rainy Sundays... Windy Dreams'' (1980) ;With Elvis Costello * ''Spike'' (1989) ;With Stéphane Grappelli * ''Stéphane Grappelli in Concert with guest Frankie Gavin'' (1993) DVD ;With The Rolling Stones * ''Voodoo Lounge'' (1994) ;With Arty McGlynn (guitar) & Aidan Coffey (accordion) * ''Irlande'' (1994) / ''Ireland'' (1997) (live recording at Radio France, Studio 104, Paris, France) ;With Sharon Shannon * ''Tunes'' (2007) ;With Hibernian Rhapsody * ''The Full Score'' (2008) ;With Rick Epping & Jim Foley * ''Jiggin' the Blues'' (2008) ;With Paul Brock * ''Omos Do Joe Cooley: A Tribute to Joe Cooley'' (2009) ;With Roaring 20s Irish Orchestra * ''By Heck: A Toast to the 1920s'' (2018) ;With De Dannan *''De Danann'' (1975) *''The 3rd Irish Folk Festival In Concert'' (1976) *''Selected Jigs Reels and Songs'' (1977) *''The Mist Covered Mountain'' (1980) *''Star-Spangled Molly'' (1981) (see '' The De Dannan Collection'') *''Best of De Dannan'' (1981) *''Song For Ireland'' (1983) *''The Irish RM'' (1984) *''Anthem'' (1985) *''Ballroom'' (1987) *''A Jacket of Batteries'' (1988) *''Half Set in Harlem'' (1991) *''Hibernian Rhapsody'' (1995) *''De Dannan Collection'' (1997) *''How the West Was Won'' (1999) *''Welcome to the Hotel Connemara'' (2000) *''Jigs, Reels & Rock n' Roll'' (2012) *''Jigs & Jazz II'' (2014)

References

External links