Dónal Lunny, who has died of cancer aged 79, was a multi-instrumentalist in three of the most influential folk bands of the late 20th century: Planxty, the Bothy Band and Moving Hearts. He played the guitar, keyboards and bodhrán, but he is best remembered for popularising the bouzouki in Irish traditional music. The round-bodied bouzouki from Greece was adapted by Lunny, resulting in a flat-backed instrument with a shorter neck known as the Irish bouzouki.
Lunny often worked in collaboration with the singer and songwriter Christy Moore and the musician Andy Irvine. In all the bands with which he was associated, Lunny played a vital role in arranging the music, being instinctively drawn to developing new harmonic and rhythmic structures. He produced many Irish music albums, also working with artists including Elvis Costello, Kate Bush, Sinéad O’Connor and Mark Knopfler.
As a composer, he wrote and arranged the music for films, documentaries and television programmes. In 1991, he was the musical director of the joint BBC and RTÉ television series Bringing It All Back Home, which won an Emmy. Born in Tullamore, County Offaly, Dónal was the fifth of nine children of Mary (nee Rogers), a teacher, and Frank Lunny, an engineer.
The family moved to Newbridge, County Kildare, when Dónal was five and he attended Newbridge college before studying at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. He played drums in a pop band, the Cyclones, at school, and then, alongside his brother Frank and schoolfriend Moore, Dónal played the guitar in a band called Rakes of Kildare. In Dublin he played in the Parnell Folk; with the band Emmet Spiceland he even had a No 1 hit, Mary from Dungloe, in 1968.
Lunny was introduced to the bouzouki by Irvine, who brought one back from his European travels in 1970. Together they formed a duo in Dublin but were soon recruited, along with the uilleann piper Liam O’Flynn, by Moore to play on his groundbreaking album Prosperous (1971). The four musicians soon decided to form Planxty.
Planxty took the Chieftains’ concept of group instrumental playing to a new level with different instrumentation, combining it with traditional and new songs, in contrast to the ballad groups, such as the Clancy Brothers, who relied mainly on guitar and banjo. Planxty’s first gigs were as support for Donovan. An eponymous album in 1973 was followed by The Well Below the Valley in the same year.
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