I had the honor of meeting and listening to Adrian Anantawan last year when my son was a guest speaker at a benefit event for a Newton, MA, organization called Understanding Our Differences, and Adrian happened to be the keynote speaker that evening. 

I admit that the first reaction I had when I heard Adrian play was HOW?!?  The hours and years I spent practicing and teaching bow technique were all brought into question when watching Adrian, who has no right hand, play with such a beautiful and rich sound, with such impeccable control of his bow.  

I am definitely guilty of being a purist when it comes to bow technique in particular, although when entering the fiddle world I had to snap out of it a bit, and I have slowly learned that there can be other ways of holding the bow other than the “right” way.  I didn’t however understand the physics of how Adrian was doing it and making it work, even as I was watching him play live right in front of me at the UOD event, and I actually still don’t quite understand it.  How is he balancing the weight throughout the strokes without having fingers?  How is he able to play spiccato and fast strokes without the finger joints?  And how on earth isn’t his sound suffering from the bow not being straight all the time??  It is in fact magical to watch and listen to.