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McGuire was only fourteen when his violin playing was broadcast for the first time on BBC radio. In 1949 at the age of only twenty-one, he won the Oireachtas (pronounced "ee-RUK-tus"), the All-Ireland musical championship held annually in Dublin) with the only perfect score ever awarded in the long history of the competition. In the 1950s, he became part of a major touring group called the Malachy Sweeney Ceili Band; later he helped form the Sean McGuire Ceili Band and the Four Star Quartet. [Ed. note: Ceili, sometimes spelled ceilidh ; pronounced "KAY-ley" ; is a Gaelic term for musical gathering]. Through the 1960s he was a leading member of the Gael-Linn Cabaret.
