Have you ever wondered about the role of feeling and consciousness and intuition while playing or performing on the flute – and pondered on how to get in touch with that capacity more easily? It’s that lovely realm that we sometimes access when we go beyond technique and mind and become one with the music itself, as though we ourselves are an instrument and some beauty that is not our own is flowing through us. Athletes call it ‘being in the zone’ – a rapture of pure consciousness when the mind is free of all thought, constraint, self-consciousness and everything we do flows from some deeper part of our being. The ego ‘I’ that separates musician from music has gone and we have become the music itself.

At the 2009 NFA Convention in New York, I caught up with Aldo Baerten and asked him about what interests and motivates him to do all that he does in the flute world...

In considering an injury (or potential injury) to the hand we must think of its relationship to the neck and upper extremity. It is anatomically and functionally an integrated unit rather than a collection of parts.....