SEVEN-year-old Mairead Hickey can play Vivaldi on the fiddle just as easily as if she were playing with a doll.

To see the precocious youngster perform is an amazing sight and sound.

She has just returned from New York where she earned a remarkable third place in the under-12 age group in the Mid-Atlantic Feadh Cheoil.

The precocious youngster was up against junior musicians from Delaware to New York, most of them considerably older than her.

The folk music event was a qualifier for the All Ireland Championships, to be held in Clonmel, Tipperary, from August 22 to 24, and Mairead has booked her place by virtue of her performance in the Bronx last week.

Mairead, a student of Bermuda High School, is well known to some locals from her performances in the local folk music club, where she first played at the age of four.

Every month she also performs as part of a folk band at St. Brendan's Hospital and she has also played on the annual Christmas televised Jean and Gene Show, with Jean Howes and Gene Steede.

Mairead's father Mick Hickey, an accomplished banjo player, said she had started learning the fiddle at the age of three and he had been thrilled by her performance in the US.

"It's quite an achievement for her to finish third in the under-12 age group," said Mr. Hickey. "Kids of her age don't get nervous.

"She has an excellent teacher, Jyrki Pietila, who was at the Bermuda School of Music but is now starting up on his own.

"She has been learning by the Suzuki method, which involves kids listening to music and then repeating it. They learn to read music as well but the emphasis is on learning by ear."

In the US, Mairead played a jig she learned at a workshop in Bermuda last October. The event featured fiddle teachers brought in from overseas by Mr. Hickey. The man who taught her the jig was Patrick Orceau.