Finnigan McGuinness

Finnegan McGuinness started fiddling when he was four and began performing in string bands by seven. Since that time, he’s played fiddle and mandolin in the Old Town School of Music Youth String Band, The Young Stracke All-Stars and the String Strangs at festivals and venues throughout Chicago and the Midwest, including the Square Roots Festival, the Fox Valley Folk Festival, White Oak Folk Festival, Lincoln Hall, Beat Kitchen, Uncommon Ground, the Hideout, and as a special guest with the Irish-Americana band We Banjo 3 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts. He made his theatre debut at age of ten as the Special Guest in the Armando Diaz Experience at Chicago’s iO theatre. He joined the Tony Award-winning Lookingglass Theatre Young Ensemble that same year, where he acts in addition to playing music. He is a member of the CYSO Concert Orchestra and Kaiso Steel Orchestra. He can be seen busking at farmer’s markets and ocean docks, jamming at pizza joints, Irish pubs and pine forests, and performing in restaurants and churches across Maine and Chicago. This spring, he was awarded the Freyda Epstein Youth Fiddle Scholarship by the Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College, where he studied Irish, Bluegrass, Old Time and Canadian fiddle styles. Finn looks forward to continuing his study of different fiddle traditions, working towards the goal of being able to sit down and jam with any musician, anytime, anywhere