Christy Moore

Newbridge, Manchester, Prosperous

Christopher Andrew Moore was born on 7 May 1945 in Newbridge, County Kildare, into a family with politics in it — his mother stood as a Fine Gael candidate — and music close by: his brother performs as Luka Bloom. Moore turned professional in the mid-1960s and, like most Irish singers of his generation chasing work, crossed to England, basing himself in Manchester and working the folk club circuit there.

His first album, Paddy on the Road, was recorded with Dominic Behan and issued in 1969. The record that mattered more was Prosperous, named for the Kildare village where it was made, because of who was in the room: Moore, the piper Liam O'Flynn, Andy Irvine and Dónal Lunny. The four of them went on to form Planxty.

Two bands, then a long solo career

Planxty took Irish traditional song out of the session and gave it arrangement — pipes, bouzouki, guitar, and Moore's voice at the centre of it. In 1980 he co-founded Moving Hearts with Lunny, a louder and more argumentative outfit that pushed traditional material against rock and jazz instrumentation.

The politics were never incidental. Moore has sung from a left-wing Irish republican position for his whole career, recorded songs written by Bobby Sands, and kept Irish and international causes in his setlists long after it stopped being fashionable to do so. Official Ireland has come round to him anyway: RTÉ listeners named him the country's greatest living musician in 2007, and An Post put him on a commemorative stamp in 2021.

The records that stuck

The solo catalogue runs to more than twenty studio albums. Ride On, from 1984, supplied a song that has outlived most of what was released alongside it and is still played most nights. Traveller in 1999 and This Is the Day in 2001 both went to No. 1 in Ireland, and Listen topped the Irish chart in 2009.

What ties the discography together is that Moore is primarily a finder of songs rather than only a writer of them. A typical record mixes his own material with pieces by Richard Thompson, Ewan MacColl, Joni Mitchell, Shane MacGowan and whoever he has heard recently in a Dublin back room — rearranged until they sound like they were always his.

A Terrible Beauty

A Terrible Beauty arrived on 1 November 2024 on Claddagh Records, thirteen tracks, and went straight to No. 1 on the Irish albums chart. In Britain it reached No. 4 on the folk albums chart and No. 21 in Scotland. Metacritic aggregated four professional reviews at 84 out of 100; The Observer gave it four stars; Hot Press named it the best folk album of 2024. The album is dedicated to the broadcaster Tommie Gorman and the promoter Vince Power, both dead by the time it appeared.

The source material is characteristic. Black & Amber was written by Briany Brannigan of the Dublin band A Lazarus Soul. There is a song for the murdered journalist Lyra McKee, with words by James Cramer, and one about Palestine. The opening track, Boy in the Wild, is sung with Moore's son Andy, and its video — directed by Ellius Grace, with Liam Cunningham and the young actor Ollie West — did the rounds separately.

An expanded edition followed on 14 November 2025, adding among other things The Big Marquee, written about the Cork tent he has played every summer since 2005.

An archive, and a president

In 2023 Moore handed his entire personal collection to the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin — lyric notebooks, correspondence, recordings, setlists, photographs and press material covering more than sixty years. As part of the donation he sat in ITMA's studio and recorded 188 songs, talking through the memory attached to each one.

The public result opened on 6 October 2026, when President Catherine Connolly launched Christy Moore: How Do Songs Live? at ITMA's premises at 73 Merrion Square. Connolly said that for more than fifty years Moore had inspired musicians and activists "to stand in solidarity with those facing challenges and oppression". Moore's own framing was more practical: he liked the thought of "some young person in Australia or America or Clare or Belfast being able to log on here and get the words and hear the tune". The exhibition opened to visitors on 12 October 2026 and runs Monday to Friday, 11am to 5pm, in bookable one-hour slots, in Irish as well as English.

The same archive produced a documentary, Cartlann Christy Moore, made by ITMA and commissioned by TG4, which premiered on the channel on New Year's Eve 2025.

Residency instead of touring

Moore does not tour in the ordinary sense. He books long runs in a handful of rooms and lets people come to him. In September 2025 he announced eleven nights at Vicar Street in Dublin spread from November 2025 to March 2026, with tickets on sale from 10am on 12 September 2025 at €65.70 and €63.70 for seats and €61 for balcony standing. On 3 November 2025 the National Concert Hall added four main-stage shows at 8pm on 25 April, 2 May, 17 May and 30 May 2026, priced €45 to €65.

Two things broke the Dublin pattern in 2026. He returned to Cork's Live at the Marquee — he is the only artist to have appeared at every edition since it began in 2005 — on a date announced for 27 June 2026, with tickets released on 5 November 2025. And on Saturday 1 August 2026 he played All Together Now at Curraghmore Estate in County Waterford, his first appearance at an Irish festival in 14 years, announced on 11 December 2025 on a bill that also had Kneecap at the top of it.

Twelve dates are on sale now: Vicar Street on 1, 8, 16, 23 and 30 November and 7 December 2026, then the Mullingar Park Hotel in County Westmeath on 7 January 2027, Killashee House Hotel in Naas on 14 January 2027, and Vicar Street again on 1, 8, 16 and 29 March 2027.