With piccolo participants and auditors arriving from across the United States and Canada, Dr. Christine Beard, Associate Professor of Flute at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, staged the Second Biennial International Piccolo Symposium June 11-14, 2009. [Notes from the first symposium, are available at http://www.piccolosymposium.com] This year it was an even busier, informative, and rewarding four days of concerts, warm-ups routines, masterclasses in both orchestral excerpts and solo repertoire, workshops, round-table discussions and camaraderie.

As well as the months of organizing and seeing to the detailed moment-to-moment operation of the four day event, Christine Beard musically contributed to the opening evening concert with the Nebraska Wind Symphony, performing her own arrangement of Damare’s The Wren Polka, Eric Richards’ Dance of the Southern Lights (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKyR1c4WDi0) and in duet with Nan Raphael in Heather Imhoff’s transcription of Gennin’s The Fluttering Birds (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6mMouljMgQ) . In a particularly engaging workshop, Christine presented many useful and insightful websites for piccolo and flute instructors, showing that web surfing can be used as an effective pedagogical tool. Included were John Wion’s vibrato page  (http://homepage.mac.com/johnwion/vibrato.html) and Patricia George’s x-rays of throat vibrato (http://members.shaw.ca/ppguide/krantz/xray/xray.htm), and, of course, her own Piccolo Headquarters site, a treasure trove of information (http://www.piccolohq.com/). And ever the piccolo advocate, Christine led an open discussion about the integration of piccolo study into private study and the college curriculum.

This second symposium’s special guest artist was France’s astounding piccolo soloist, Jean-Louis Beaumadier. His latent musicality and virtuosity were constant inspiration to us all as we marveled at his impish joyousness in approaching even the most technically demanding passages. What was particularly striking was the fluidity and ease with which he played: demonstrating orchestral excerpts or solo repertoire, rarely needing to refer to the written page and performing challenging recital fare without ever stopping to swab out his instrument between selections.

Two videos from his recital are posted - the charm of expressive simplicity exudes from the three short selections from Pipeaux 1934, a collection of seven short pieces for pipes by various French composers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmcffOkhp8c&NR=1) and his memorable performance of La Merle Blanc by Eugene Damare (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQVCJCHWE-0) was one in which he seemingly laughed in the face of the considerable technical feats that he was effortlessly conquering while he conjured up delightful additions of pure, physical whimsy for us to enjoy. Sadly there is no video record to share of Donatoni’s Nidi (The Nest), an interesting but extremely challenging work of extended techniques and difficult rhythms which he carried off with style and aplomb.

Jean-Louis’ teaching approach seemed to mirror his performance. In his warm-up session, beginning with material from his own publication of exercises, we scampered energetically in thirds up the piccolo, followed by chromatic scales and then arpeggios, adding tonguing in various non-standard rhythmic patterns. His generosity seemed almost limitless as he shared with us his vast knowledge of piccolo repertoire for an instrument that most of us would claim has little from which to choose! When teaching he sometimes resorted to demonstration, but he also employed phrases of expression such as “more legato but also more tender” and urged us to get our articulation on the outside, giving it more presence.

Returning for the second symposium was chamber musician and piccolo pedagogue extraordinaire, Lois Herbine. With her opening workshop on “The Elements of Musicality” Lois examined the phrasing philosophies of William Kincaid and Marcel Tabuteau, legendary principal flute and oboe of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Hailing from this tradition, and with her excellent language skills, Lois offered one valuable nugget of insight after another during the masterclass sessions. “Tell the audience through crescendo and coloration what you’re going to do…or not do!” “An ‘ooo’ inside your mouth gets rid of cracked E’s and F’s.” And regarding the Lte. Kije excerpt, “Play without runs; they are only a way to get from note to note….Runs are icing on the cake, but they’re not the phrase.”

Most instructive was the focus on dynamics session she led. After each of us played a second octave B-flat as loudly (but musically) as possible, she summoned eight of us to step forward to form a semi-circle, lining us up from the softest to the loudest player. Then over eight beats with each of us playing just one note we created an evenly graduated dynamic arc from ppp through to fff. As each of us were located within our dynamic comfort zones, this exercise gave us a new sense of the unbounded volume possibilities of the piccolo amongst the group. Replicating the levels as we repositioned ourselves into less personally easy locations was challenging because we used the original performance as our standard.

Putting her own dynamic range and expression to the test in an evening recital, Lois presented a combined programme of original and transcribed works. In our constant quest for new original material, it was lovely to hear her musical interpretations of the undeservedly forgotten Fantasy by Willard Elliott and Bernard Rogers’ Study in company with Joseph Hallman’s 2008 Sonata and her excellent rendering of Tilmann Dehnhard’s "Wake Up!" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5itjWYN-4o&NR=1)  Along with works by Daugherty and Mower were two beautifully phrased borrowings from other instruments: Massenet’s Meditation and Maria Theresa von Paradies’ Sicilienne. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLgUHFIh4gw&feature=related)

Band specialist, Nan Raphael, in addition to performing in the opening concert (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4UJn2tR_SU&feature=related) put us through our paces with a thorough body warm-up followed by a regimen of whistle tones, arpeggios, five note scales, Maquarre, and scales in thirds, in fourths and even sevenths. Nan also led a special class on Sousa’s Stars and Stripes, Forever and talked about musical careers in the military.

In preparing for this symposium, Dr. Beard called for proposals. Kate Prestia-Schaub, as the performance proposal winner offered an exciting afternoon recital of contemporary piccolo repertoire, including Flash!, Daniel Dorff’s winning composition in the IPS Composition Competition. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJd-5h4CWzY)

Stephanie Kocher, accompanied by eight piccolo treasures from the National Music Museum from the University of South Dakota, (http://orgs.usd.edu/nmm/) offered an interesting and informative presentation, examining pre-Boehm and competing fingering systems, and challenging us to think about how these instruments might have been used.

Scheduled during the days were intensive masterclasses covering such orchestral audition fare as Beethoven’s 9th, Symphonie Fantastique, Polovetsian Dances, Coppelia, Sheherazade, Shostakovich 6th and 10th, Valkyrie, Daphnis and Chloe, Firebird, Bolero, Mother Goose, and La Gazza Ladra along with solo repertoire. It seemed that all too soon the symposium’s final recital by the participants, Katherine Evans, Shannon Abels, Amy Thiemann, Angela Heck, Krystle Jones, Kristen MacGorman, Jessica Jans, Nora Epping and their ever-on-call accompanist, Christi Zuniga was ending.

From the imaginings of the first Piccolo Symposium concept through all the details of its scheduling and even past the hospitality of the final barbeque into the preparations for the Third International Piccolo Symposium in 2011, to Christine Beard we are sincerely grateful. Keep posted for further details and do plan to attend!

Websites for The 2009 International Piccolo Symposium artists:

Christine Beard - http://www.piccolohq.com/Bio.html

Jean-Louis Beaumadier - http://www.jean-louisbeaumadier.fr/en/home

Lois Herbine - http://www.herbine.info/lois/welcome.html

Nan Raphael -  http://www.nanraphael.com/

Nancy Nourse is a Canadian educator, composer/arranger and flutist. She has published articles in the Journal of Aesthetic Education, Journal of Curriculum Studies, Canadian Music Educators Journal, Flutist Quarterly and Flute Focus. Special Interests include aesthetics, feminist issues, the flute in liturgy, learning styles, flute choirs and the history of the piccolo. She is currently a doctoral candidate in music education at The University of Western Ontario and the piccolo player in Orchestra Toronto.