Frankie Gavin and Noel Hill – Thursday 17th July 2025

Event Phone: 0863389619

Frankie Gavin and Noel Hill

Live in Concert

 

Jerry Moynihans,

Clonmel

Thursday 17th July 2025

 

 

 Clonmel World Music is delighted to present the legends Frankie Gavin and Noel Hill in concert in Clonmel

Noel Hill was born in Caherea in West County Clare, Ireland and has been a professional musician for the past 49 years. In County Clare  the concertina tradition is so strong the instruments was nicknamed “the Clareman’s Trumpet” and legend has it there was once a concertina in every second house. It was into one of these households that Noel Hill and his 7 siblings was born. His parents, grandparents and grandaunts were all concertina players. He was particularly influenced by his uncle, Padraig A Chnoic (Paddy Hill), who also played the concertina. Noel lived in a house which was the last in the area to hold the traditional House dances, where musicians were always welcomed; particularly towards the end of the year when farm work was done. It was at these events he learned his early music. He started playing at the age of 8. Noel was lucky to have heard endless hours of Willie Clancy, Paddy Canny, Peter O’Loughlin and Paddy Murphy and much of the music in his repertoire today comes from the music learned as a child from these great players. Noel always said he wanted to be a uilleann piper but pipes were not readily available.

Noel has taken the humble concertina from the house dances of County Clare to the big stages throughout the world. He has single handedly elevated the instrument’s popularity, which now has enjoyed tremendous development for the past four decades. This popularity is not only because of Noel’s awe-inspiring performances, along with being a highly respected authority on Ireland’s Traditional Music, but also because of his many years as a committed teacher.

In 1975 Noel Hill teamed up with Tony Linnane, Tony Callanan and Kieran Hanrahan to form the group “Inchiquin”. They recorded one album. Hanrahan and Callanan subsequently left to form Stockton’s Wing and Noel went on to record one of his most celebrated albums “Noel Hill and Tony Linnane” (1978) with Tony Linnane (fiddle), Matt Molloy (flute), Alec Finn (bouzouki and mando-cello) and Micheal O’Domhnaill (harmonium). Inchiquin continued for a time and toured Ireland and Germany with Noel, Tony and Barry Moore (now Luka Bloom).

 

Frankie Gavin has played fiddle and flute since his teenage years. At the age of seventeen, he won All-Ireland competitions for fiddle and flute. Originally influenced by the great Irish and American-Irish fiddle players, James Morrison, and Michael Coleman, he later found himself playing with the stars including among others The Rolling Stones, Earl Scruggs, Lez Paul, Stéphane Grappelli, James Galway and Yehudi Menuhin as well as with many of the great contemporary players and singers of traditional Irish music. All have left their mark on his eclectic approach to music. In 2010, he officially became the world’s fastest fiddle player when he played The Foxhunter’s Reel, at a breath-taking 150 beats per minute!

Gavin has played for four American presidents, starting, at the age of six when he played for John F. Kennedy on his 1962 visit to Ireland, then later for Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama. He has also played for France’s President Mitterrand, Britain’s Prince Charles (now King Charles III), Prince Albert of Monaco and, in front of the Pope on his last visit to Ireland.

The name Frankie Gavin is also synonymous with De Dannan, the globally renowned traditional Irish band he founded in the mid-1970s. Despite a few breaks and changes of personnel over the years, the band continues to play still performs and excites audiences in Ireland and around the world. 

In the early 1970s Gavin played musical sessions at Galway’s Cellar Bar, with Alec Finn (bouzouki, guitar), Mickey Finn (fiddle), Charlie Piggott (banjo), and Johnnie (Ringo) McDonagh (bodhrán). In 1974, from these and further sessions, he founded the group De Dannan with Alec Finn.

Although De Danann has had many highpoints over a quarter of a century, particularly with the singing of Dolores Keane and Maura O’Connell and the box playing of Mairtin O’Connor, Frankie’s powerful virtuoso fiddle playing has always been at the core of the De Dannan sound.

Frankie has recorded 16 albums with De Dannan as well as a number of solo albums, and three collaborations, He has also guested with The Rolling Stones on their ‘Voodoo Lounge’ album, with Keith Richards on ‘Wingless Angels’ and with Earl Scruggs the great banjo man. Gavin has also played and recorded with Andy Irvine, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello, Stéphane Grappelli, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.  His recent projects include The Roaring 20s Irish Orchestra, which celebrates the 1920’s music of the Flanagan Brothers, along with Martin Murray, Carl Hession and Clonmel’s own virtuoso Emma Corbett.

 

Reviews:

 

” Frankie is a superbly uncompromising player, he makes refreshment of the old by picking out and polishing every detail and setting it off in a steady, listenable pace. Gavin is edgy and brilliant on both fiddle and flute, with always the most meticulous attention given to tone and variation. Live, his tune sets are perfectionism that drive and are driven by an audience spontaneity that spurs Gavin to push fiddle from shriek to rasping bass.”  – Fintan Vallely in the Sunday Tribune

 

“Noel Hill is one of those standard-setting voices in Irish music today. Few musicians in any field or in any generation achieve a position where both audiences and experts agree on their preeminence and mastery of an instrument; Noel Hill’s virtuosity has firmly established him as the defining Irish concertina player of our time.”

–-PJ Curtis, Notes from the Heart

 

“Noel’s soulful playing of the old song-airs of Ireland is the perfect introduction to his art; from the life affirming detail of his dance music to the plaintive long notes of the slow airs, and all created on a musical instrument – smaller than a shoe-box, between his hands.”

“In his hands the concertina is a new instrument, yet resounds with the integrity of generations, for Noel Hill makes the music new not through experimentation in other genres, but through consummate exploration and illumination from within Irish Traditional Music.”

-Tony McMahon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doors at 7pm

Music starts at  8pm sharp