Yes a fine player, his grandson is carrying on playing excellent music.
I feel it is important that different regional styles are encouraged, in my opinion CCE encourage one style only, with their competitions, these competitions give high marks for ornamentation and the judges appear in general to go for a homeogeonised CCE style, which does not appear to encourage individuality or regional styles beyond the regional fleadhs.
Sliabh Luchra is not a state of mind, it is a regional style of trad music that has certain musical charecteristics which do not appear to be found much in other parts of ireland, the same could be said of Donegal and only one or two other areas.
however for any tradition to remain vibrant and not to become dead it has to evolve and change, it will be interesting to see if it changes and how it changes or whether it remains exactly the same.