Tributes paid to musician Dónal Lunny after his death aged 79

Tributes have been paid to musician Dónal Lunny, who has died aged 79. He died on Friday morning in St James’s Hospital of cancer.

Friends and collaborators described Lunny as a “genius” and saluted his “immense” contribution to Irish music. He was one of the central figures in folk and traditional music for the past 60 years.

He joined his first band with his older brother Frank and neighbour Christy Moore when they formed the Rakes of Kildare as teenagers.

Moore, who was two years ahead of him in school, maintained a friendship and a professional collaboration with Lunny for decades afterwards.

Last year Lunny received the lifetime achievement award at the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards. “I’ve known Dónal Lunny for 66 years,” Moore said when presenting Lunny with the award.

“I met him first in 1959 in school, and what I remember most from those years were his lack of homework, that he was more interested in being out on the Liffey trying to tickle trout, or climbing trees to gaze into the wild birds’ nests.”

Born in Tullamore, Co Offaly, but brought up in Newbridge, Co Kildare, from the age of five, Lunny was the middle child of nine children.

He was a multi-instrumentalist from the beginning, learning the harmonica at the age of six. He could drum and play the bodhrán, and was capable of playing the guitar, bass, mandolin and keyboard, but it was the bouzouki for which he was most famous. He picked it up from sometime bandmate Andy Irvine and made it his own.

Lunny designed his own bouzouki, an instrument associated with Greek music, to fit in with his style. It was an instrument, he believed, much more suited to the Irish traditional genre than the guitar. “The chords were less dense. It was far easier to play chords. The bouzouki gave a much more open accompaniment to Irish music.”

He enrolled in the National College of Art & Design in 1965 and studied basic design and graphic design for three years, but he was always destined to be a full-time musician.

His first success came with the teenage folk band Emmet Spiceland, which had an Irish number one with Mary from Dungloe.

In 1970, Lunny formed a musical partnership with Andy Irvine that would prove to be a catalyst for many important folk acts that would dominate the scene for decades afterwards.

They created their own club night downstairs at Slattery’s pub in Capel Street, Dublin, which they called “The Mug’s Gig”. Two years later Lunny and Irvine joined up with Liam O’Flynn and Moore to form Planxty.

Two years later he left Planxty to join The Bothy Band, playing guitar and bouzouki. The Bothy Band quickly became one of the prominent bands performing Irish traditional music.

The third Irish traditional “supergroup” that Lunny was involved in was Moving Hearts where he again joined Moore and added the piper Davy Spillane. Moving Hearts combined rock beats with Irish traditional music and had a significant impact in the early 1980s.

After Moving Hearts split up in 1985, Lunny became a successful producer on his own record label, Mulligan Records. He was the producer and music director of the soundtrack of the five-part 1990 BBC documentary Bringing It All Back Home charting the influence of Irish music throughout the world.

He produced albums for Paul Brady, Elvis Costello, Indigo Girls, Sinéad O’Connor among others. He also played with Kate Bush and Mark Knopfler.

Lunny’s first marriage was to Judy Slott, with whom he had a son, Oisín, who is a musician. Cora Venus Lunny, also a musician, is his daughter from a relationship with German photographer Julie Buthe.

He later married Japanese musician Itami Hideko and they had a daughter, Sora. He also had a son with the late singer Sinead O’Connor. Shane O’Connor died in 2022.

His good friend, the broadcaster Philip King, described Lunny’s contribution to Irish music as “immense” not just as a musician, but also as a producer. “There’s nobody compared to him from the beginning. His musical world was very wide. You look across the list of Irish musicians he has produced, his influence his huge. You hear it today in Amble and Kingfishr and many others. We would sonically and rhythmically not be in this place with Irish music without him.”

He was the “Quincy Jones of Irish producers”, King added.

King’s wife Nuala O’Connor was the maker of the RTÉ documentary entitled On Time: Dónal Lunny which was released last year. She also made Bringing It All Back Home.

Filming for the documentary began in 2024 and Lunny suffered his first bout of serious illness during the making of it. “We got there in the nick of time,” she said.

She described him as a “genius” and a “totally naturally gifted musician” who had no ego and lived for playing music.

The Irish Traditional Music Archive paid tribute to Lunny in an extensive statement listing some of his contributions to the genre.

“His musical life was founded on creativity, friendship and collaboration,” it read.

“His work with the likes of Christy Moore, Andy Irvine, Liam O’Flynn, Paddy Glackin, Matt Molloy, Maighréad and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill, Frank Harte and so many others places him at the heart of some of the most important developments in Irish music of the modern era.

“His election to Aosdána reflected the wider significance of that contribution to Irish artistic life.”