Singers pay tribute to legendary Tony Small

Singers Christy Moore, Seán Keane, Dolores Keane and the highly-acclaimed female Kerry duo, Lumiere, will join forces at the Town Hall Theatre on Sunday night, June 22, to pay tribute to one of Galway’s finest songwriters and composers, the late Tony Small.

Tony, who died unexpectedly in January, 2013 at the age of 63, was responsible for some of the great folk songs in the Irish repertoire. He was best known as a folk singer, but he was interested in and influenced by a wide variety of music, as well as by poetry and fiction.

He wrote original songs as well as adapting poems by other writers, and his works have been recorded by performers of the calibre of Tommy Fleming, Dolores Keane and Seán Keane, as well as by Christy Moore. This week on RTÉ radio’s John Murray Show, Christy Moore paid tribute to his old friend and performed Tony’s song, Mandolin Mountain, which featured on Tony’s album of the same name, released shortly before his death.

The John Murray Show performance was Christy’s first time playing the song in public and he announced that he intended to record it. For Tony’s brother, Jackie, it was a proud moment. The friendship between the two men stretched back to the late 1960s when they met in the emerging folk scene in England.