An emotional resonance has always been at the core of Tony MacMahon’s accordion playing. Now that he’s decided to lay his accordion aside and step away from live performance, there’s an especially poignant quality to this live recording from Spiddal.
MacMahon’s playing is writ large across the selected sets, with Steve Cooney’s accompaniment underscoring and countering with just the right balance of driving rhythms and subtly intuitive melody lines.
The big tunes are still firmly within MacMahon's grip (The Wounded Huzzar and O'Neill's March), but so is his deliciously haughty reading of The Rolling Wave and the sprightly The Garden Of Daisies.
A fine valediction from a musician whose fervour shows few signs of waning.
