Joe Derrane

The Boston-born son of Irish immigrants, Joe Derrane is ranked among the best possible button accordionists in the annals of Celtic music. Although he documented some Irish music on 78 rpm in the 1940s and ’50s, he vanished from the original music circuit until executing on the Irish Folk Celebration at Wolf Snare Farm Recreation area for Performing Arts in Vienna, Virginia in 1994. The efficiency followed the discharge of Irish Accordion, reprising 16 paths that Derrane documented as an adolescent. Since his come back, Derrane has documented three albums — Provide Us Another, in 1995, with accompaniment by Irish pianist Felix Dolan, and Go back to Inis Mor, in 1996, which highlighted pianist Carl Hession of Shifting Cloud and a string quartet. The name track, among four original music on the record, described Derrane’s ancestral house on an isle in Galway Bay. The Connect That Binds, released in 1998, highlighted Derrane playing a fresh 23-crucial, two-row key accordion that he helped style, plus accompaniment by Frankie Gavin, Zan McLeod, Seamus Egan and Jerry O’Sullivan. The oldest of three brothers, Derrane was raised within a musical house. His father performed accordion and melodeon and his mom played violin. A regular listener of Irish radio place broadcasts in Boston, Derrane became therefore enchanted with the playing of Jerry O’Brien, a melodeonist who got used Joe O’Leary’s Irish Minstrels, that his parents searched for O’Brien out to teach their boy. Derrane started lessons with O’Brien at age ten and continuing to review under him for just two years, playing the single-row accordion for five years. At age fifteen, Derrane researched piano accordion and discovered to learn music; he became a fanatic of Brooklyn-born diatonic acordionist John J. Kimmel, “The Irish Dutchman,” and discovered to play a lot of his repertoire. During his mature year at Objective SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL in Roxbury, Derrane documented 16 solo paths with pianist Johnny Connor. In 1948 and 1949, he documented ten duets with O’Brien, his previous instructor. Although he resided in NY for just two years (1952 and 1953), he came back to Boston and became a normal performer for the ballroom dance circuit. Through the past due 1940s and early ’50s, he performed with such rings as Johnny Powell’s Irish Dance Music group, the Superstars of Erin, the Galway Bay Music group, the Irish All-Stars as well as the All-Star Ceili Music group. After learning harmonics and organizing on the Schillinger Home (afterwards the Berklee University of Music) for half a year, Derrane performed with many bands that customized in Jewish and Italian music.