ABOUT ENDA
ABOUT ENDA SCAHILL
Enda is the 2022 winner of the prestigious Steve Martin Banjo Award.
Enda is the founding member of Billboard #1 mega band We Banjo 3. He has performed live with The Chieftains, Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Carlos Nunez, and Eileen Ivers, has recorded with Grammy winners Ricky Skaggs, Bryan Sutton and Aubrey Haynie, toured with Frankie Gavin and Stockton’s Wing, and was an original member of Instrumental Band of the Decade The Brock McGuire Band
In 2008 Enda published his first Irish Tenor Banjo Tutorial book. This was the first ever pedagogical approach to banjo teaching and it laid out in simple terms the essential foundation techniques for good banjo playing Professor Mick Moloney wrote “Enda’s tutor is masterfully conceived, the product of years of playing and thoughtful reflection”. The tutor is now the top selling Irish banjo tutorial on the market. Enda then released Volume II of his banjo tutorial series which takes an in-depth look at creating a unique playing style and musicianship using techniques such as ornamentation, variation, harmony and rhythmical ideas.
“Enda Scahill is a gifted banjo player blessed with extraordinary technique”
Enda was central to the development of the We Banjo 3 Tune Book about which The Irish Echo wrote
“40 Solos for the Irish Tenor Banjo is an outstanding resource for banjo players wishing to better know and understand ornamentation and variation. With this tutor, WeBanjo3 has given us a resource young banjoists will undoubtedly turn to for years to come”
Enda’s solo album Pick It Up was released in 2000 and is widely acclaimed as one of the essential Irish banjo albums of all time. Enda has been described as “just about the strongest banjo I’ve have ever heard” (Art Ketchin, Celtic Beat) and Irish American News in Chicago said “Enda does things on the banjo which should be impossible”. Irish Music Magazine has described his playing as “simply divine”
In 2006 Enda released the album Humdinger with Paul Brock and Ryan Molloy which was awarded Album of the Year in the Irish Times and Instrumental Album of the Year in Irish American News. Paddy Maloney of the Chieftains hailed the album’s “incredible virtuosic playing”
In 2011 the Brock McGuire Band released Green Grass Blue Grass, a collaboration between the band and some of the greatest legends of American Bluegrass- Ricky Skaggs, Bryan Sutton, Aubrey Haynie, Mark Fain and Jeff Taylor. The album, which was recorded in Ireland and at Skaggs Family Records in Nashville has been critically acclaimed and described by PJ Curtis as “An electrifying rendering of tunes from different – though related – traditions as they flow from the hearts and fingers of these virtuoso musicians at the very top of their game. A ground-breaking, milestone recording”
“An Irish band transcending even the best of superlatives”
There can’t be many rhapsodic superlatives left in the box for Irish quartet We Banjo 3, whose virtuosic Irish/bluegrass/old-time mix attained freshly dizzying heights on theirstupendous second album Gather the Good, which went on to garner 4 Album of the Year awards in the US and IrelandOne of the best live acts to come out of Ireland in recent years, the multi-award winning We Banjo 3combine supergroup credentials with a breath-taking command of the emotive power of fiddle, guitar, mandolin and banjo. Any single member of this group could a electrify a venue with a solo performance, but together, in the joyous musical alchemy of We Banjo 3, their passionate lead vocalist like a young Springsteen adopted by the Chieftans, the result is truly unforgettable. Simply put, the gold standard of Irish and American roots music.
“These four lads just keep taking their musical genius to new levels and whatever about the magic of theirstudio albums, there’s nothing like the raw emotion and fusion of the live experience”