Frankie Gavin and Sean Gavin at the Plough & Stars, San Francisco

Two legends of the Irish music genre, Frankie Gavin and his brother Sean (button accordion) are performing at the Plough & Stars in an exclusive engagement! (It also just happens to be Frankie’s birthday!)

Note that there will be a house concert in Berkeley on Saturday, May 2 and another in the Santa Cruz Mountains on Saturday, May 9 – send RSVP for either house concert to Julie Horner. There will be several more concerts between May 1 and May 17 at house venues in Arcata, Mendocino, Santa Barbara, and Altadena. Space will be limited.

Fiddle player Frankie Gavin was born in County Galway, Ireland in 1956 and is the youngest of four siblings from a musical family, with older brother Sean playing the accordion.

Frankie began playing Irish traditional music at a very young age and is largely self-taught. In 1973, at the age of seventeen, he placed first in the All Ireland Under-18 Fiddle Competition and in the All Ireland Under-18 Flute Competition, both on the same day. He, along with Alec Finn, joined the iconic Irish band, De Danann, eventually recording 16 albums.

From his immersion in the traditional repertoire of the regional styles of Galway, Clare, and Sligo/Leitrim, and his study of archival 78 recordings, he maintains a vast store of tunes and a familiarity with arrangements and settings. He also has a gift for absorbing and switching between styles. “Frankie Gavin’s fiddle playing is technically complex, unabashedly brilliant, and has a pronounced, driving swing which harks back to the sound of the 1920s.”

His solo albums include “Croch suas e”(Gael Linn) in 1983, “Frankie Goes to Town”(Green Linnet) 1991 and his latest cd “Fierce Traditional”(Tara) which features his brother Sean on accordion.

Other duet/trio albums include “Irlande” in 1994 with Arty McGlynn and Dermot Byrne recorded live in France, “Jigs and jazz” 1993, a cd and video with Stephane Grapelli, “Omos do Joe Cooley”(Gael Linn) 1996 with Paul Brock and Charlie Lennon and “Traditional Music of Ireland” 1977 with Alec Finn.

He has also been in demand as a guest in the wider music community performing with Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones on “Wicked Angel” in 1988, The Rolling Stones “Voodoo Lounge” in 1994, and also with Elvis Costello, Earl Scruggs and Yehudi Menuhin. But as with his last solo album Frankie inevitably returns to his traditional roots.