Tony MacMahon

Tony MacMahon was an Irish button accordion player and radio and television broadcaster. MacMahon's chief early inspiration, accordionist Joe Cooley, was a frequent caller at the MacMahon home in Ennis, Co. Clare from 1949 until 1954, when Cooley left Ireland for the United States of America. MacMahon has described the memory of Cooley's music as being "embedded in his DNA.". In 1957, MacMahon moved to Dublin to train as a teacher, where he came into contact with accordionist Sonny Brogan and fiddler John Kelly. Travelling in North America in 1964, in both New York and Dublin, he shared a flat with piper and singer Seamus Ennis, whom he credited as an important influence on his playing of slow airs. MacMahon played the accordion in the "press-and-draw" style of his mentor Joe Cooley. He was regarded as an exceptionally powerful performer, particularly of slow airs, and has been described as an "iconic figure in traditional music circles". His own attitude to his music, and his chosen instrument, could be ambivalent, however: "I wouldn’t regard my own music either as traditional or indeed anything to write home about. [...] From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Ma...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)