Biography All Music Guide Wikipedia
All Music Guide:
Frankie Gavin comes from Connemara, one of the Irish-speaking areas of Ireland. He is best known as De Dannan's fiddle player, but he also plays the flute and records solo records.
Wikipedia:
Frankie Gavin, b.1956, Corrandulla, County Galway, is a fiddle player of traditional Irish music.
Frankie Gavin is from a musical family; parents and siblings being players of the fiddle and accordion. As a child he played the tin whistle 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.
In the early 1970s Gavin played musical sessions at Galways's Cellar Bar, with Alec Finn (bouzouki/guitar), Mickey Finn (fiddle), Charlie Piggot (banjo), and Johnnie (Ringo) MaDonagh (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; Finn claimed to have registered the De Dannan name.
Gavin has played with, and for, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello, Stefan Grappelli, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and in 2010 became reputedly the fastest fiddle-player in the world, with an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.
