Mick McAuley

While skilled players fill the music business in abundance, a select few stand apart through imaginative insight. The Irish multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and composer Mick McAuley, adept on accordion and whistle alike, spent his childhood in Calan, Kilkenny. A button accordion acquired at age nine ignited an enduring devotion to traditional repertoire and fostered command of every keyboard instrument he encountered. Across subsequent years he has appeared on stage and in the studio with Ron Kavana, Karan Casey, and Niamh Parsons while maintaining full-time membership in the prize-winning Celtic ensemble Solas. His inaugural solo album, Ocean's Breadth, arrived on Shanachie in 2003 and mixed longstanding folk material with newly crafted pieces.