Award for Máirtín, a true gentleman of music

Being named winner of theTG4 Musician of the Year award is great for many reasons – one of those being the opportunity it provides for a career review. So says this year’s winner of the prestigious prize, accordion player Máirtín O’Connor,

But Máirtín, one of the most popular and respected people in Irish music, isn’t basking in his own, considerable achievements during this career retrospective. Instead, when we meet to discuss the award, the Galway City man deflects attention from himself by mentioning the many people he has played with over the years.

For someone who never had a plan, that list is considerable, and includes everybody from Dire Straits Mark Knopfler to our own Christy Moore.

Those are the big names, but there have been many more superb musicians through the years since singer-songwriter Thom Moore called to the door of Máirtín’s family home in Mervue in 1977, inviting him to join the group Midnight’s Well. Máirtín had completed a diploma in electronics in 1976 but wasn’t working and leaped at the chance. His summers had been spent playing music in O’Connor’s pub in Salthill, and music was where his heart lay.

To this day the composer and performer is grateful to his parents for allowing him and his siblings to follow their dreams. There was music in the family – his mother, who died last year was a great singer – and Máirtín’s first squeezebox came from his paternal grandparents who lived in Knocknacarra, he recalls.

During his career Máirtín played in groups which had singers – including in Reel Union and De Dannan with Dolores Keane – but would “have been more tuned into instrumental movement,” he says.

However, he’s been adopting a new approach recently, since the Máirtín O’Connor band have gone on tour with folk legend Christy Moore.

For more, see this week’s Connacht Tribune