The great Sean McGuire and pat Conroy ..on guitar. Sean had many accompanists and he always said that from the time he met pat his playing improved because pat was his greatest @ccompanist and was his driving rhythm. There was a telepathy at work between them.. Pat in his own right is probably one of the greatest guitarists in this country and still is he is highly versatile playing traditional...and can slip over to jazz and classical and blues with blinking an eye .. I knew Sean when he lived in Mullagh In Cavan.he lost his voice at the time but recovered it . He was a virtuoso and a perfectionist where music was concerned..he brought great joy to our hearts with his music. God bless him has them dancing in heaven now ...I’m not sure when this film was made I would say he was in his late 70 ies at time and passed away sadly in 2005 ..
@alderneyfred I think you off base. From a bio of McGuire: "McGuire was only fourteen when his violin playing was broadcast for the first time on BBC radio. In 1949 at the age of only twenty-one, he won the Oireachtas with the only perfect score ever awarded in the long history of the competition. In the 1950s, he became part of a major touring group called the Malachy Sweeney Ceili Band; later he helped form the Sean McGuire Ceili Band and the Four Star Quartet.
hi, lads, no doubt he was a great fiddler, in my humble opinion (after talking to other fiddlers) he seemed "not to be the sean McGuire he used to be". But it was pleasant for me to be there somewhere in the Shetland Isles, around 1988-89
@@aranos6269 Sorry, if you thought I was implying classical music was superior. It is just a different style. But I maintain Sean, as good as he was, wasn't good enough to have been a top classical concert violinist. I was merely answering the question posed by Lisnageeragh. You mentioned Yehudi Menuhin. Yes, he did collaborate with Stefane Grappelli but Grappelli would have been the first to acknowledge it wouldn't have worked in the other direction. Mind you, whilst Menuhin was technically capable of playing the notes, to me it just sounded like that, as is the case with many classical musicians who try to play Irish trad. But, I agree there are always exceptions. This reminds me of the comedy sketch featuring Andre Previn with Morecambe & Wise when Eric was trying to play the opening theme of Grieg's Piano Concerto - 'all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order'! Although Sean had a classical training on the violin he had the benefit of growing up in a traditional Irish music household. But he did employ some of the classical techniques he learned for example, spiccato bowing in his trad playing and some might contend didn't sit comfortably in the traditional style. By the way I knew Sean and as a youngster I did have the privilege of learning from and playing with him in his then home off the Springfield Road.
But that isn't how you play Irish Traditional Music......... ......I guess some classically trained musicians think that theirs is the only way to play music. Well, you know all the words, and you've sung all the notes, but you've never quite learned the song, my son.
