Bradford Maloney is an Irish American flute player living in Clayville RI. He taught Irish flute in the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, Year 18, 2015-2016. He writes:

I started playing tinwhistle at age 8 – I had no formal lessons – simply learning melodies from family
folk recordings At age 17, I began to study the modern concert flute as a requirement for a
theory/harmony class. At age 20 I became interested in Irish traditional music after hearing Irish music sessions in the New York City area, I gave up the flute and focused primarily on learning Irish fiddle. I stiudied with fiddler
Tony DeMarco and Brian Conway and regularly attended workshops at the Irish Cultural Center in New
York City and received lessons from Eileen Ivers, Patrick Orceaux, Maeve Donnely and others.
Around age 23 I moved from New Jersey to Rhode Island, I quickly met flute player and maker Skip
Healy. At age 25 I was offered an apprenticeship building flutes in his shop and absorbed a large amount
of information on all aspects of simple system flutes and performance of Irish traditional music on the
flute and tinwhistle.

At this time, under Skip's supervision I made my own keyless simple system flute and began to study
Irish flute in earnest, In addition to studying with Skip I made trips to the NPU Irish piping club
meetings in the Boston area. I also attended workshops led by John Skelton, Conal O'Grada, Joannie
Madden and Kevin Crawford at the Catskills Irish Arts week in Durham, NY.
I have continuously been performing both on fiddle and flute at functions, dances and sessions since 1997.