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.[1] When 17 years old, he gained first place in both the All Ireland Under-18 Fiddle and Flute competitions.[2] [3]
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).[4] 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.[5]
Gavin has played with, and for, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello, Stefan Grappelli, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood,[6] and in 2010 became reputedly the fastest fiddle-player in the world, with an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.[7]
