Seamie O’Dowd is a guitarist, singer, and songwriter who also plays fiddle, harmonica, mandolin, and a number of other instruments.
He has travelled worldwide playing music and has shared stages and played with many great musicians and bands including the following;
Mairtin O’Connor, Cathal Hayden, Christy Moore, Declan Synott, The Chieftains, Jimmy Higgins, Tommy Emmanuel, Dervish, Steve Wickham, Matt Molloy, Liam O’ Flynn, Thom Moore, Dick Gaughan, Cathy Jordan, Rick Epping, Kieran Quinn, John Joe Kelly, Martin Hayes, Dennis Cahill and Cathal Roche.
His experience also includes recording production, teaching and more recently, film soundtrack work, and encompasses solo performance as well as extensive work with bands and small groups as both a member and a session musician.
Seamie’s public musical experience spans four decades. He made his first radio appearance at the age of ten on a Radio Eireann programme called Young Musicians and began playing publicly with his father, the renowned Sligo fiddle player Joe O’Dowd at around the same time.
He has been a tutor at the South Sligo Summer School in Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo on a regular basis since its beginnings in the late 1980s, teaching fiddle for six of its first seven years and teaching traditional guitar since the mid 2000s up to the present day.
He was awarded The Freedom Of The Borough in 2004 by Sligo Corporation while a member of internationally renowned traditional group Dervish and acknowledged again in 2010 at a civic reception given by the Mayor of Sligo for his personal contribution to the cultural life of the area.
He also worked with film score composer George Fenton in London’s Abbey Road Studios on part of the film score of Jimmy’s Hall, a film made by Ken Loach in the Sligo/Leitrim area.
As part of the Masters of Irish Music project devised by Martin Hayes, he, along with Mairtin O’Connor and Cathal Hayden played the group’s concerts in the Sydney Opera House as well as a flagship performance at the Lincoln Centre in New York.
He also joined the project on three US tours.
He played and recorded with Dervish for six years, during which time he played with them at the legendary Rock in Rio festival in Brazil.
He was nominated for the Best Folk Musician award in 2018 in RTE’s inaugural Irish Folk Awards.
