Dónal Lunny, Planxty Founder Who Reshaped Irish Traditional Music, Dies at 79

Dónal Lunny, the musician and producer who helped remake Irish traditional music over six decades, died on Friday morning, October 23, 2026, at St James's Hospital in Dublin. He was 79 and had been living with cancer. The Irish Traditional Music Archive shared the news on Friday morning, and the Arts Council of Ireland and Aosdána confirmed his death in a statement the same day.

Lunny was born on March 10, 1947, in Tullamore, County Offaly, and grew up in Newbridge, County Kildare, where he began accompanying traditional players at the age of 15. One of his school friends in Newbridge was Christy Moore, who became his closest collaborator. As teenagers they played in a trio, the Rakes of Kildare, with Lunny's older brother Frank. Lunny studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin from 1965 to 1968. In 1968 he reached a wider audience with the vocal group Emmet Spiceland, whose single Mary from Dungloe went to number one in Ireland.

The bands that changed the sound

In 1971 Lunny was a founding member of Planxty, alongside Moore, Andy Irvine and Liam O'Flynn. The band put traditional songs and tunes into new arrangements and reached audiences beyond the folk circuit, with albums including The Well Below the Valley and Cold Blow and the Rainy Night. Lunny played on every Planxty recording. He is the musician most often credited with making the bouzouki a standard instrument in Irish music, after Irvine gave him one and he had a flat backed version built to his own design.

In 1975 he joined The Bothy Band, and he later formed Moving Hearts with former Planxty bandmates, a group that mixed traditional music with rock rhythms on albums such as Dark End of the Street and The Storm. Later groups included Coolfin, Mozaik, LAPD and Usher's Island. Across those bands, his playing and arranging opened new harmonic and rhythmic possibilities in the tradition, as the Irish Traditional Music Archive put it in its tribute.

A producer other musicians called first

Lunny also built a second career in the studio. He co-founded Mulligan Records and produced 17 albums for the label. As a producer and player he worked with Kate Bush, Mark Knopfler, Clannad, Baaba Maal, Paul Brady, Elvis Costello and Sinéad O'Connor, with whom he had a son, Shane, who died in 2022 at the age of 17. He composed for stage and screen, including the soundtracks for Eat the Peach in 1985 and This Is My Father in 1997, and the title music for the television series Bringing It All Back Home and River of Sound.

He won the IRMA Producer of the Year award in 1996 and the National Entertainment Award in 1998. He was elected to Aosdána in 2006 and received an honorary doctorate in music from Trinity College Dublin in 2008. In 2025 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards, presented by Moore, who said he had known Lunny for 66 years. In January 2026 he became the first inductee into the Late Late Show Trad Music Hall of Fame.

Tributes

Shona McCarthy, director of the Arts Council, said Lunny's championing of Irish traditional music was instrumental in bringing the artform to the fore, and called him a trailblazer who inspired generations of musicians. Peter Sirr, speaking for Aosdána members, said his work was central to the renaissance of Irish music over the last several decades. Broadcaster Miriam O'Callaghan called him a musical genius and a beautiful man. Producer Philip King called him the Quincy Jones of Irish producers.