Noel Hill (musician)

Noel Hill
Background information
Notable instruments
concertina

Noel Hill (born 1958) is an Irish concertina player from County Clare who has had great influence developing the modern playing style of the Irish concertina, as a performer and educator.

Noel Hill was born in Caherea in West County Clare, Ireland, into a family with seven siblings. His parents and grandparents were all concertina players. He was particularly influenced by his uncle, Padraig A Chnoic, (Paddy Hill). He lived in a house which was the last house in the area to hold the traditional Irish house dance, where musicians were always welcomed; particularly towards the end of the year when farm work was done. It was at these events that he learned his early tunes, rather than from the radio, books or records.

Hill started playing at nine and listened extensively to Willie Clancy, Paddy Canny, Peter O'Loughlin, Paddy Murphy, and Micky Hanrahan. Much of the music in his later repertoire comes from the music he learned as a child from those players. Hill wanted to be play the uilleann pipes, but pipes were not readily available; the pipes were to influence his style of concertina playing. The concertina which Noel Hill took up had initially been purchased for his brother.

Hill has been a professional concertinist since the late 1970s. He joined up with Tony Linnane, Tony Callanan and Kieran Hanrahan to form the group Inchiquin. They recorded one album. Hanrahan and Callanan then left to form . His most celebrated album is "Noel Hill and Tony Linnane" (1979) with Tony Linnane (fiddle), Matt Molloy (flute), Alec Finn (bouzouki and mando-cello) and Micheal O'Domhnaill (church harmonium). Inchiquin continued with Noel, Tony and Barry Moore (Luka Bloom) and toured Germany.

The Pogues wrote the tune, "Planxty Noel Hill" in response to his criticism of their band during a radio interview; the tune appeared on their 1986 Poguetry in Motion EP.

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