here’s a hidden gem: Brian Finnegan with hair playing bamboo flute.
Very unorthodox style (triple tonguing!) in Moving Cloud…but very nice.
Hey Dave,
Christel here, long time no see! Thanks for posting this video of Brian Finnegan, incredible.
Its been posted a couple of times here. I posted it myself on one of the bamboo threads but not much was said.
I think its an Olwell as he talks about figuring out the technique on an Olwell G in his interview on Brad Hulreys page.
Cool technique and he uses it well, but for me one of those things you learn to do and then try not to.
I find it impressive and disturbing at the same time.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a Chris Dawson (Rhiannon flutes) flute, rather than an Olwell. Brian was playing Dawson’s flutes in the beginning and years ago Chris sent me a cassette full of Finnegan and McGoldrick recordings made with his flutes. I have one of his G bamboo flutes, it’s a screamer. Visually identical to the Olwell bamboo flutes, but I don’t think he made anything bigger than G or F since he didn’t have a source for longer cane.
Edited to add that I’m almost sure it’s a Dawson, because Chris stamped the key (G or F, etc.) at the bottom end of the flute and you can just catch it in some of the closeups.
Funny, he does say in the interview that his first bamboo flute was an Olwell, but I remember hearing that he started playing a bunch of Dawson’s Rhiannon bamboo flutes after that. You can see the light glinting off the stamp at the bottom end of the flute, which I have on my Dawon, and I don’t think Patrick put the key name down there. So my guess is still that this is one of Chris’s flutes.
Edited to add that I’m changing my mind 
Chris Dawson’s website mentions McGoldrick and others as people who’ve played his flutes, but not Finnegan…I must have been confusing McGoldrick with Finnegan. So I’ll go along with the others who say this is an Olwell.
Brian was a member of a group of Northern Irish musicians called “Upstairs In A Tent”, who played at Aberdeen Folk Club in 1993. I still have a recording of that gig, and the publicity photo. Brian was playing an Olwell cane flute at that time - 3 years before that particular video - because I remember asking him about the flute, never having seen one before, and thinking Olwell was going to put a lot of Irish flute makers out of business. Happily, I was wrong. Both Mr. Olwell and the other makers are thriving.
Its been posted a couple of times here. I posted it myself on one of the bamboo threads but not much was said.
it’s said that imitation is the highest form of flattery. So be flattered…even though I never saw your posts (or those of the others) on this.
Life is full of duplication.
Hence why there are so many different publishers of The Bible.
And the Dictionary.
And the phone book.
