Niall Vallely

Over the past 30 years Niall Vallely has established himself worldwide as one of Ireland’s most significant musicians and composers. Born in Armagh in 1970 he began learning the concertina at the age of seven and over the years he has developed a unique approach to playing the instrument and his compositions have gained widespread acclaim both within the world of Irish traditional music and further afield. Niall has toured and recorded with the likes of Nomos, Buille, Karan Casey, Paddy Keenan, Tim O’Brien and Asturian band Tejedor and recently Jazz legend Cassandra Wilson.
Since the early 1990s Niall has been working at composing traditional-style tunes. His tunes have been recorded on more than 80 albums while some of them have become ‘standards’ in sessions throughout the world.
In more recent years he has been expanding the scope of his compositions to embrace larger scale forms and instrumentation and involving musicians from the worlds of traditional and classical musics. He has received commissions from RTE LyricFM, BBC, TG4, Cork Opera House, Crash Ensemble, University College Cork, Kate Ellis, and the Vanbrugh Quartet and has had his works broadcast on radio and television in Ireland, the US and throughout Europe. Niall recently received a PhD in composition from University College Cork. In 2019 his Concerto for Concertina and Orchestra was premiered by the National Symphony Orchestra at Dublin’s National Concert Hall.