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\n Photo: Leon Farrell\/Rolling News<\/p>\n
\n Photo: Leon Farrell\/Rolling News<\/p>\n
\n The renowned musician, composer and producer, who helped transform the sound of Irish traditional music, passed away on Friday.\n <\/p>\n
One of Newbridge’s most celebrated musical figures, D\u00f3nal Lunny, has died at the age of 79.<\/p>\n
The renowned musician, composer and producer, who helped transform the sound of Irish traditional music, passed away on Friday.<\/p>\n
Born in Tullamore in 1947, Lunny moved to Kildare with his family at the age of five, growing up and attending school in Newbridge.<\/p>\n
It was during those early years that he developed his passion for music and formed a friendship with fellow Kildare musician Christy Moore in 1959, beginning a musical partnership that would span more than six decades.<\/p>\n
Lunny went on to become a founding member of Planxty alongside Moore, Liam O’Flynn and Andy Irvine, before helping shape the success of The Bothy Band and Moving Hearts.<\/p>\n
His influence extended well beyond traditional music, with a distinguished career in composition and record production, working with artists including Kate Bush, Paul Brady and Elvis Costello.<\/p>\n
In February 2025, Lunny received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the RT\u00c9 Radio 1 Irish Folk Awards, recognising his extraordinary contribution to Irish music.<\/p>\n
Tributes have been paid by President Catherine Connolly, Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin and musicians across the country.<\/p>\n
The President of Ireland commented, “D\u00f3nal was one of Ireland\u2019s greatest musical figures, a wonderfully talented musician and producer who was central to so many of the most influential moments of the last 60 years of Irish music.”<\/p>\n
For Newbridge and the wider Kildare community, his passing marks the loss of a musician whose early roots in the county helped shape a remarkable career and an enduring influence on Irish music.<\/p>\n
He is survived by his partner \u00dana O’Boyle and his family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Leon Farrell\/Rolling News The renowned musician, composer and producer, who helped transform the sound of Irish traditional…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,28328,3770,43],"class_list":["post-664065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kfm","tag-kildare","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}