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Sharon Shannon

Irish musician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ457684
Source-derived summary

Sharon Shannon (born 8 June 1968) is an Irish musician, best known for her work with the button accordion and for her fiddle technique. She also plays the tin whistle and melodeon. Her 1991 debut album, Sharon Shannon, was the best-selling album of traditional Irish music ever released in Ireland. Beginning with Irish folk music, her work demonstrates a wide-ranging number of musical influences. She won the lifetime achievement award at the 2009 Meteor Awards.

Early life

Shannon was born in Ruan, County Clare. At eight years old, she began performing with Disirt Tola, a local band, with which she toured the United States at the age of fourteen. Shannon also worked as a competitive show jumper, but gave it up at the age of sixteen to focus on her music. She similarly abandoned studying at University College Cork.

In the mid-1980s, Shannon studied the accordion with Karen Tweed and the fiddle with Frank Custy, and performed with the band Arcady, of which she was a founding member.

Editorial summary

“Sharon Shannon” enters the record as irish musician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sharon, Shannon and Irish can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1968, 1991, 2009—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1968-11-12. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Sharon, Shannon and Irish.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Sharon Shannon” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Sharon, Shannon and Irish provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q457684. VIAF identifies the subject as 38595151. The Library of Congress control number is n93121842. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 1991 and 2009.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Sharon Shannon”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Sharon Shannon primary sources, Sharon Shannon archive and Sharon research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Sharon Shannon”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Sharon Shannon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.