Heard on the radio this am that today is Mary Bergin’s birthday. Best wishes to her and thanks for the inspiration that brought at least some of us to the whistle as a “real instrument”.
Steve
Does she play with right hand on top or is that photo some kind of reverse image?
That’s how she plays… see a video here http://www.babelsound.com/mary-bergin/videos/
[[Interesting link that; ignore that it takes you to a poignant moment in the tv show Babewatch and scroll down to the Mary Bergin clip]]
Best wishes.
Steve
I played Happy Birthday for Mary this morning on my whistle. 
I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing her play or meeting her in person. Boy, that is a freaky right hand grip! If I were teaching a newbie I wouldn’t teach them a grip like that in a million years, yet Mary is phenomenal. Just goes to show 
Thanks for the music, Mary.
m.d.
Looks like a flute grip. Which is not to say that flutes aren’t freaky … 
Thanks to Bill Ochs, I had the wonderful good fortune to see/hear Mary play at close quarters in the old Blarney Star in lower Manhattan a long time ago. Happy Birthday Mary!
Philo
MT, I suppose you mean the way her fingers are angled - but flutists have the left hand closer to the head as whistlers do, and the RH farther away, so doesn’t look very fluty to me.
I have seen Mary play, and never noticed this. A guy at my session plays his low whistle with the hands reversed too, and makes a great job of it.
Yes, the finger angle is what emmdee was referring to, with the hand rotated so that the base of the index finger touches the tube.
You seem to be saying that playing left-handed is not flutey, but that’s certainly not the case with timber flute. Many of the finest Irish flute players play with the right hand on top.
I stand corrected. I had forgotten about flutists who play to the left, like Patsy Hanley and Catherine McEvoy and many others. My apologies.
I seem to recall reading that she can half-hole the Cnat easily at speed. I’m wondering if the position of her index finger is what helps to make this possible.
Well yes, there is some advantage to using the fingertip instead of finger pad when half-holing. But keep in mind that Mary’s technique also involves certain work-arounds to handle the limitations of half-holing C-nat - including tonguing, and working out settings that avoid the C-nat and avoid complicated transitions to and from the C-nat (which need not be avoided when cross fingering). So you have to consider her half-holing holistically (pun intended!) in the context of her overall technique.