Legendary Fiddler Cunningham Dies.

A BLITHE spirit in the Celtic music scene has sadly left us all too soon. 

Early Tuesday morning word spread that Scottish fiddler extraordinaire Johnny Cunningham suffered a fatal heart attack on Monday evening in his Stuyvesant Town apartment on Manhattan’s lower East Side. 

When word spread that he was gone some fellow musicians and friends gathered at his beloved local, the 11th Street Bar in the nearby East Village, where Johnny himself had been earlier for a brief time before leaving for home complaining of illness. The native of Edinburgh, Scotland was only 46 but he managed to live several lifetimes in such a short time span and was truly one of the great characters on the music scene.

Ironically, Cunningham and singer Susan McKeown had just finished a transcontinental one-month tour of their collaboration A Winter Talisman: A Holiday Celebration From Scotland and Ireland this weekend at the Egg in Albany on Saturday. They then drove down to New York City in the snowstorm when their Oxford, New York show was cancelled due to the weather. 

Dubliner McKeown still had trouble believing her musical soulmate was gone when I talked with her Tuesday morning. She said they met up again on Monday to do some last-minute recording in a Williamsburg studio of the song “When I Was On Horseback,” which Cunningham introduced to her. McKeown wanted it to complete her upcoming CD entitled Sweet Liberty.

When they parted in the late afternoon that was the last McKeown saw of Cunningham.

The protection afforded by the talisman appeared to run out on this very creative spirit, who squeezed as much out of life as possible. He always found so many ways to express its beauty, sadness and most of all its humor through his twisted yet endearing charm.

The last time I saw Johnny was up at Symphony Space at a Capercaille Concert (where he introduced me to the love of his life Trish McCormack) just days before he was to appear in an October New York City reunion concert with his brother Phil Cunningham. The two had met and played earlier in the summer at the superb Smithsonian gathering of the Scottish musical clan organized by Nancy Groce, and talked of further work together, even an album. 

In Washington D.C. Johnny was in great form at two shows that I attended. He arrived on Saturday morning from New York in a heat wave after playing the Blarney Star until all hours. His mix of musical brilliance and wit formed an immediate rapport with any audience. The closing concert that Saturday evening saw him alongside Scottish fiddlemates Brian MacNeill and Alistair Fraser in an exercise of pure showmanship that could easily have gone on for hours, following two hours of a building frenzy that you had to witness first hand. It was the last time that I saw Johnny play.

As a performer and fiddler he set the world ablaze with his work in groups like Silly Wizard, Relativity, Nightnoise and currently with the touring fiddle ensemble “The Celtic Fiddle Festival,” along with Kevin Burke and Christian LeMaitre, who planned a late winter tour. 

“It is a shock to everyone and we will miss his music and humor so much and it is hard to think that he won’t be around,” said Kevin Burke from his home in Oregon. 

That would be prodigious enough but he possessed far greater talents. As a musician with a flair for performance and nuance, he made an excellent producer as he guided acts like Cherish the Ladies and Solas in their earlier recordings and even a PBS television and CD special called the Soul of Christmas. Johnny’s music and lyrics formed the basis for the highly acclaimed production of Peter and Wendy and he was actively working on another production with the prestigious Mabou Mines in New York.

As the Irish Voice went to press, St. Mark’s in the Bowery in the East Village (11th Street and Second Avenue) offered the Parish Hall for a Memorial gathering either on Thursday or Friday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Exact details will be posted at www.johnnycunningham.com, where memorials messages may also be left. Otherwise, information can be obtained at the 11th Street Bar. Call 212-982-3929 for details.

Contact at fromthehob@aol.com.