Dónal Lunny died on the morning of Friday, October 23, 2026, at St James's Hospital in Dublin, after a battle with cancer. He was 79. His family shared the news on his Facebook page and closed with an old Irish line that says it best: "Ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann." We won't see his like again.
Listen as you read this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpaOAy1SeCQ
Ireland's President Catherine Connolly called him "one of Ireland's greatest musical figures." The Taoiseach called him "a colossus" of Irish music. Mike Scott of the Waterboys called him the "greatest of all time." None of them is exaggerating.
A boy who'd rather be on the river
Lunny was born in Tullamore, County Offaly, on March 10, 1947, the middle child of nine. His family moved to Newbridge, County Kildare, when he was five. He was playing harmonica by six, and he soon picked up guitar, drums, bodhrán, bass, mandolin and keyboards.
In Newbridge he met a schoolmate two years ahead of him named Christy Moore. Moore later remembered the young Dónal's "lack of homework," and 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." Lunny had the guitar first, and he showed Moore his first chords. "I was about two months ahead of him on the guitar," he joked. With Dónal's older brother Frank, they formed their first band, the Rakes of Kildare. The friendship and the musical partnership lasted more than 65 years.
Lunny studied design at the National College of Art & Design from 1965, but music won. His first hit came with Emmet Spiceland, whose "Mary from Dungloe" went to number one in Ireland.
Planxty, the Bothy Band and Moving Hearts
In 1970 Lunny teamed up with Andy Irvine, and the two started a club night, The Mug's Gig, downstairs at Slattery's pub on Capel Street in Dublin. Irvine gave him his first bouzouki, and Lunny made it his voice. He later designed his own instrument, convinced it suited Irish music better than the guitar. "The chords were less dense," he said. "The bouzouki gave a much more open accompaniment to Irish music." That open, driving, harmonically adventurous accompaniment became one of the defining sounds of modern Irish music. Anyone who plays bouzouki or octave mandolin in a session today owes him something.
In 1972 Lunny, Irvine, Moore and the great uilleann piper Liam O'Flynn formed Planxty, and Irish traditional music was never quite the same. That same year he played on Moore's landmark album Prosperous, the first of 13 Christy Moore albums he'd appear on.
He left Planxty to help found the Bothy Band, the high-energy group that put pipes, fiddle, flute and his bouzouki together like a rock rhythm section. Then came Moving Hearts in the early 1980s, which fused traditional tunes, rock drums and Davy Spillane's pipes with hard-edged political songs. Three "supergroups," three revolutions, one man at the center of each.
The producer
In 1976 Lunny co-founded Mulligan Records with Séamus O'Neill, an artist-first label that released the Bothy Band, Paul Brady and the Boomtown Rats. After Moving Hearts split in 1985 he became one of the most sought-after producers in the business. He produced or played for Paul Brady, Elvis Costello, the Indigo Girls, Sinéad O'Connor, Kate Bush, Mark Knopfler, Mary Black, Clannad and U2, and appeared on more than 50 albums.
He was producer and musical director for the 1990 BBC series Bringing It All Back Home, which traced Irish music's journey around the world, and he scored films including Eat the Peach and This Is My Father. His friend, the broadcaster Philip King, called him "the Quincy Jones of Irish producers."
Coolfin, and a night in Northampton
In the mid-1990s Lunny gathered a new band around him. For a while people just called it the Dónal Lunny Band, but he didn't think that was quite right, so he named it Coolfin, after the old song "The Lakes of Coolfin." He described it less as a fixed group than a place where musicians could gather, record and tour together. The 1998 album Coolfin featured John McSherry on uilleann pipes, Nollaig Casey and Máiréad Nesbitt on fiddles, Graham Henderson on keyboards, Fionn Ó Lochlainn on bass, Ray Fean on drums and Roy Dodds on percussion, with guests including Sharon Shannon, Eddi Reader and Maighréad Ní Dhomhnaill. That year Coolfin also shared a sold-out Dublin stage with Japan's Kodo drummers, and in 1999 they toured Europe and the United States.
I was lucky enough to see Dónal play with Coolfin at the Iron Horse in Northampton, Massachusetts. Watching him in that small room, steady at the center of the band with the bouzouki driving everything forward, I understood what all those records had been telling me. He wasn't showing off. He was holding the whole thing together and making everyone around him sound better. As a mandolin and fiddle player, I've spent a lifetime chasing that feeling.
Later years and honors
Lunny never stopped. He played with Mozaik, with LAPD (Liam O'Flynn, Andy Irvine, Paddy Glackin and Dónal Lunny), and with Usher's Island. He was elected to Aosdána, Ireland's affiliation of artists, and received an honorary doctorate in music from Trinity College Dublin in 2008. In February 2025 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards, and in January 2026 he became the first inductee into the Trad Music Hall of Fame. The documentary In Time: Dónal Lunny, filmed as he first fell seriously ill, captured him just in time.
Illness forced him to cancel dates with a reunited Bothy Band in 2024, but he kept playing, performing with Zoë Conway at the Fleadh in Belfast this past summer and making plans with his newest band, Darkhouse.
He is survived by his children Oisín, Cora and Sora, his partner Úna, his siblings and his grandchildren. His son Shane, with the late Sinéad O'Connor, died in 2022.
Today Irish traditional music is booming again, with bands like Lankum and the Mary Wallopers filling halls around the world. They're walking a road Dónal Lunny helped pave. Put on Planxty's first record, or the Bothy Band, or Coolfin, and listen to what the bouzouki is doing underneath the tunes. That's him, still holding it all together.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis. May his faithful soul rest at God's right hand.
Adam Sweet
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