Liam O’Connor

Liam O’Connor, one of Ireland’s leading fiddle players, was born into a musical family in Dublin. During his youth, Liam was taught by Séamus Glackin. By age 15 he had won five All Ireland fiddle championships and later added junior and senior  Oireachtas fiddle competitions. He also completed all eight grades in classical violin training in the DIT College of Music, Dublin. In addition to performing as a soloist from a young age, in his teenage years he was also invited to perform in duet with established masters such as uillleann piper Liam O’Flynn and concertina legend Noel Hill.

He was awarded TG4 Young Musician of the Year in 2002. At the time, Liam was described in the Irish Times as “Possibly one of the most exciting fiddle players on the music scene since the emergence of Sean Keane and Frankie Gavin more than 30 years ago.”

In  2006 Liam and Sean were awarded a bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland under their DEIS scheme where the archiving and recording of the transmission of the tradition from older masters to younger musicians was central. 
  
In 2009, Liam released a critically acclaimed CD Dublin Made Me with uilleann piper Seán McKeon which was described as “Exceptional musicians who marry technical prowess with a marvellous sense of adventure and history” (Irish Times).

In 2009, he secured first-class honours in a graduate diploma in Irish Folklore in the UCD Delargy Centre for Irish Folklore and Linguistics and the National Folklore Collection. He has taught as a guest teacher on undergraduate and post-graduate courses at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, Limerick, and in DIT, DKIT and UCD. He has also taught and performed at numerous Irish and international music festivals. He has served as a board member on the TG4 Gradam Ceoil Selection Panel, on the board of the Irish Traditional Music Archive and as honorary secretary of An Cumann le Béaloideas Éireann/The Folklore of Ireland Society.

In 2017 Liam released The Loom, a solo album that received five-star ratings and rave reviews and was voted “Trad Album of the Year” by The Irish Times.