Noel Hill

Few players have shaped the modern Irish concertina as directly as Noel Hill, the County Clare musician whose work as both performer and teacher has steered how the instrument is played today. Born in 1958 in Caherea, in West Clare, he grew up in a household of concertina players, including his uncle Paddy Hill. His earliest tunes came less from records or the radio than from the house dances held in his neighbourhood, where musicians were always welcome towards the end of the year. The uilleann pipes he longed to play were not readily available, yet they came to influence his concertina style.

Hill has worked as a professional concertinist since the late 1970s, first with Inchiquin, the group he formed with Tony Linnane, Tony Callanan and Kieran Hanrahan, which made one album. His best-known record, Noel Hill and Tony Linnane (1979), also features Matt Molloy and Alec Finn. In 1986 The Pogues answered his radio criticism with "Planxty Noel Hill", released on their Poguetry in Motion EP. A 2008 assault in a pub toilet left him with facial fractures, and at a 2015 trial he said his playing was permanently impaired.