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No one has won more All-Ireland solo
championships on fiddle than Séamus Connolly, whose total
of ten represents a benchmark that may never be equaled. His first
title came at age 12, just ten months after initially picking
up the instrument, while his first senior title came at age 17,
making him the youngest senior champion ever. Séamus, who’s
self taught, also won the coveted Fiddler of Dooney competition
as a soloist in 1967 and four Oireachtas duet titles with Kilmaley,
Clare, flutist Peadar O’Loughlin.
Born in Killaloe, Clare, in 1944, Séamus
was raised in a household of music. His father, Mick, played accordion,
whistle, and flute; his mother, Lena, played accordion and piano;and
his younger brother, Martin, is a button accordionist who won
the All-Ireland senior title in 1978. Séamus also played
in two exceptional céilí bands, the Leitrim and
the Kilfenora, and formed musical ties with button accordionists
Paddy Ryan from Tipperary and Paul Brock from Westmeath.
But it is with another button accordionist,
Paddy O’Brien (1922-1991) of Newtown, Tipperary, that Séamus
forged one of the most celebrated duos in Irish musical history.
From about 1964 to 1976, the year Séamus immigrated to
America, the two played together as often as they could, and at
one point they joined Peadar O’Loughlin, fiddler Paddy Canny,
and pianist George Byrt in a group called Inis Cealtra.
In 1973 Séamus Connolly and Paddy
O’Brien, accompanied by pianist Charlie Lennon, recorded
a “little LP” of just six tracks, The Banks of the Shannon.
It was anything but “little” in the estimation of Irish
traditional music lovers, who eagerly snapped up the limited copies
to savor the stunning tandem playing of Séamus and Paddy,
dubbed “the Father of the B/C Accordion.”
Stateside, Séamus Connolly has
added substantially to his prior achievements in Ireland. He has
made two acclaimed solo recordings, Notes From My Mind in 1988
and Here and There in 1989, as well as Warming Up, a superb CD
with flutist Jack Coen, button accordionist Martin Mulhaire, and
pianist Felix Dolan in 1993. That same year, Séamus contributed
four tracks of his own to the CD reissue of The Banks of the Shannon,
which contains the six original tracks of the “little LP”
and five solo tracks from the mid-1950s by Paddy O’Brien.
The Clare fiddler’s talent also graces The Boston College
Irish Fiddle Festival: My Love Is in America in 1991, Masters
of the Folk Violin in 1993, and more than two dozen other albums
by such artists as Jerry O’Sullivan, John Whelan, and Jimmy
Nooan.
Séamus’s involvement in
Irish traditional music is not limited to performance. He is a
teacher (Brendan Bulger, the first Bostonian to win an All-Ireland
fiddle title, is one of his former pupils), summer school and
festival organizer (Boston College’s Gaelic Roots from 1993
to 2003), record producer (e.g., the double-CD Boston College
Irish Studies Program Celebrates Gaelic Roots in 1997), and author
(Forget Me Not, a book of tunes packaged with two CDs, all of
which he produced in 2002 with Laurel Martin, another former fiddle
student of his who’s now a Boston College teaching colleague).
In April 2004 Séamus Connolly was named the Sullivan Artist
in Residence in Irish Music at Boston College, an endowed position
that recognizes his overall contributions to the college since
1990.
Amid these many accomplishments, Séamus
prefers to single out his role as Gaelic Roots founder and director
in bringing to Boston College such honored guests as Peadar O’Loughlin,
Proinsias Ó Maonaigh, Josephine Keegan, Bobby Casey, Tommy
McCarthy, and Johnny O’Leary, the last three of whom have
since passed away. This profound deference and selfless service
to the giants of Irish traditional music help stamp Séamus
as one himself.
[bio by Earle Hitchner,“Ceol”
columnist for The Irish Echo and contributing music writer for
The Wall Street Journal.]
For performance schedule and more info,
please visit www.seamusconnolly.com
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SÉAMUS
CONNOLLY 
