I ran across a YT video that was an overview of Mary teaching the Irish actor, Macdara Ó Fátharta, to go from 0-60 on the whistle in 8 months.
I’ve seen some of these other videos in the Faoi Lán Cheoil series–Jeremy Irons learning to play the fiddle his gran bought him (still had the same one), and as I recall, there were several episodes, maybe half-a-dozen?
Poked around on TG4 to see if I could find Mary’s series, without success.
Anyone know where I could find all of these episodes? I looked in the search function here, and didn’t see a reference, but might have missed this.
It was a long time ago, nearly twenty years (?), they aired that and the series is no longer archived in the usual place. I saw some of it at the time and I seem to remember there was some talk about it on the forum, notably about John Creedon learning the flute.
I may be wrong, time can play tricks with memory, but if I recall correctly they were stand alone 40 minute episodes for each instrument so you YouTube is probably all there is for the whistle.
Thank you, I’ll give it a whirl. I tried the one I linked to, and I didn’t make it very far because it seemed to be devoid of the actual instruction portion. I might try to chew through the rest just to see if there’s anything else in there.
These programmes weren’t intended to show actual instruction, it’s light weight stuff, fulfilling the station’s cultural brief, with a celebrity, a bit of music etc. Light entertainment for d’tellie.
Wasted opportunity, from my point of view, but now that you put it that way, I could see that the general audience might not be all that interested in the finer points of semiquaver double taps and the nuances of regional distinctions in polkas.
This is a wonderful episode and great for students to get the feel of what our music is all about. I’m enjoying the part with Joe and Antoinette, who look exactly as I remember them. I stopped right there for a break and to say thank you here.
