From the Publisher

For the beginner to the highly advanced player of Irish flute, tin whistle, or Boehm-system flute. Features a simple and penetrating new approach to understanding and notating ornamentation that goes beyond any previous method, exploring ornamentation techniques never described in print before. Also includes adaptations for Boehm-system flute players, guidance on breathing and phrasing, 49 ornamentation exercises, history and theory of traditional Irish flute and whistle music, and 27 meticulous transcriptions of recordings by these important Irish flute and tin whistle players: John McKenna ,Tom Morrison, William Cummins, Séamus Ennis, Willie Clancy, Paddy Taylor, Paddy Carty, Grey Larsen, Josie McDermott, Matt Molloy, Cathal McConnell, Mary Bergin, Donncha Ó Briain (Denis O'Brien), Desi Wilkinson, Breda Smyth, Seán Ryan, Conal Ó Gráda, Micho Russel, Joanie Madden, Kevin Crawford, Catherine McEvoy, and Seamus Egan. For those who don't read music, almost all the exercises, examples and tunes appear on the two companion CDs.

Grey has, through his research, patience, and diligence, completed a work on Irish flute and tin whistle that I feel is essential reading for anybody interested in getting it right.v

- Matt Molloy, Irish Flute player with the Chieftains

About the Author

Grey Larsen was born in 1955 in New York City. His family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, the following year. He began piano lessons at the age of four and enjoyed a childhood and youth full of music exploration, his inner world filled with the keyboard music of Bach and Mozart, the rock, R & B, and Motown sounds on the radio, the songs of contemporary folk music interpreters, and traditional Appalachian and Irish music. From 1970 to 1972, he studied composition and early music at the Cincinnati College - Conservatory of Music before moving on, in 1973, to continue at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio. While pursuing early and modern classical music on the one hand, he came ever more deeply under the spell of traditional music on the other, and for several years he followed both streams with equal energy and dedication. In these and later years, he spend a great deal of time learning traditional Irish music from elder musicians, especially immigrant Irishmen Michael J. Kennedy (1900-1978), Tom Byrne (1920-2001), and Tom McCafferty (born 1916), in Cincinnati and Cleveland, Ohio. Upon completing his Bachelor of Music degree at Oberlin in 1976, the streams forked. He bid a fond farewell to the academic side of music and set a course following his love of traditional music, exploring other waterways that would branch, cross, and rejoin over the decades. He leads a varied and rich musical life as a performer, teacher, author, recording artist, record producer, mastering engineer, and as the Music Editor of Sing Out! magazine. Since the early 1970s, he has also devoted himself to the traditional fiddle music of his native Midwest and Appalachia. But that's another story. He has three children and lives in Bloomington, Indiana, USA.

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