Frankie Gavin

Biography

Frankie Gavin (born 1956) is a fiddle player of traditional Irish music. He is recognized as a fiddle-singing pioneer.

Early years

Frankie Gavin was born in 1956 in Corrandulla, County Galway, from a musical family; his parents and siblings being players of the fiddle and accordion. As a child, he played the tin whistle 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

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.
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, and Stéphane Grappelli, and in 2010, he became reputedly the fastest fiddle-player in the world, with an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.