Throughout my career as a freelance flutist, I’ve been asked many times by member of the general public in particular if it’s possible to make a living solely from playing and teaching music. It certainly is possible, and having done this for many years, I have put together some advice for anyone considering a career as a freelance musician...

Writing about the music I compose is difficult for me to do. I feel that the music I compose should express beauty without rhetoric, and that the music I compose isn't mine, even though I composed it - explaining it as if it were mine seems foolish to me. However, I can give some insight as to my thoughts about music as a whole which may help flutists understand the flute music I compose....

Both as Flute Focus Business Manager and through my professional experience, I am well aware of the enormous stress individuals exert on themselves when going into business, quite apart from those stresses imposed on them by external factors. Some time ago I was asked to comment on the stresses that result from blurred lines between one’s personal and business life, i.e. when you go into business with your spouse/partner, family or friends. When business is good, all’s well, but huge problems can occur as soon as business difficulties arise.

As part of an ongoing series on New Zealand music, Flute Focus would like to offer the opportunity for New Zealand composers to present their talents to the world.

Receiving any kind of grant, scholarship, fellowship or award can be an excellent way to achieve your artistic dreams which otherwise may be difficult if not impossible. Receiving a grant can also be a form of recognition for your contribution to your community and/or your art form. Grants can offer financial support for a range of projects (individual or group) or allow artists to take up exciting professional development opportunities locally or overseas.

Five years ago, I put an ad in the paper and posted flyers on bulletin boards, advertising my services as a flute teacher. I prayed that at least a few adults would find their way to my studio. Although I adore children, I wanted a varied student population so that my teaching day would be interesting and stimulating. God answered my prayers in a big way...

This is the third and final in a series of articles on selecting a headjoint. The first article explored preliminaries and included general advice about preparation for the hunt, an overview of the headjoint market, and an overview of influences on headjoint design. The second article explored in detail the various attributes of sound that can be affected by different headjoints, such as projection, loudness, intonation, color, and responsiveness. This final article explores the effects of different materials, such as gold, silver, platinum, and wood, and the effects of alterations in the design of parts such as crown and stopper assemblies and risers; it concludes with a brief discussion of how to learn more and what to do next...  

This is the second in a series of articles on selecting a headjoint. The first article explored preliminaries and included general advice about preparation for the hunt, an overview of the headjoint market, and an overview of influences on headjoint design. This second article explores in detail the various qualities of sound that can be affected by different headjoints, such as projection, loudness, intonation, color, and responsiveness. The third article explores the effects of different materials, such as gold, silver, platinum, and wood, and the effects of alterations in the design of parts such as crown and stopper assemblies and risers; it concludes with a brief discussion of how to learn more and what to do next...  

This is the first in a series of three articles devoted to exploring the world of headjoints with a goal of arming you with knowledge to overcome (or at least reduce) the stress and confusion of finding a new headjoint. This article discusses preliminaries and includes general advice about preparation for the hunt, an overview of the headjoint market, and an overview of influences on headjoint design. The second article will explore in detail the various qualities of sound that can be affected by different headjoints, such as projection, loudness, tuning, color, and responsiveness. The final article will discuss the effects of different materials, such as gold, silver, platinum, and wood, and the effects of alterations in the design of parts such as crown and stopper assemblies and risers; it will conclude with a brief discussion of how to learn more and what to do next....

Maria is a 67-year-old amateur flute player who has been in love with music all her life. Brent is an intelligent 51-year-old businessman, a capable and responsible executive who runs a medium-sized company. Kathy is a talented college student who majors in voice. While Maria, Brent and Kathy all perform confidently as soloists and in their ensembles, they have one anxiety in common: they get nervous about going to a music lesson.

To fully prepare for an audition, you need from 3 to 6 weeks, depending on whether you have previous knowledge of the standard excerpts – ideally 6 weeks to accommodate the physical and mental preparation. Set out a time-frame like the one below.

Trevor Wye was a freelance orchestral and chamber music player on the London scene for many years and has made several solo recordings, but it is his teaching for which he is best known.Formerly a professor at the Guildhall School of Music in London, and for 21 years at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, he now runs his own Flute Studio in Kent, offering a seven-month postgraduate course with the theme ‘the flute and nothing but the flute’. Trevor’s famous Practice Books have sold around one million copies, not only in English, but ten other languages as well.

At 15, I remember wondering which of these paths I should follow: fine art school, a tool and die making apprenticeship with Air New Zealand, or continuing with my flute. I was reasonably good at drawing/painting, I loved crafty things like sewing, I enjoyed tinkering with gadgets and working on flutes, and I loved playing. The flute won out, mostly because I understood that success as an instrumentalist is somewhat related to building on one’s connections with other musicians. I was doing well enough in that aspect that it made sense to keep trying that path first.

As a musician and flutist, I have been fortunate to have enjoyed the wide variety of careers that music offers. I had the honor of studying with Murray Panitz while obtaining the Master of Music degree from Temple University. At that time I was a frequent substitute in the Philadelphia Orchestra and an active freelance flutist in the Mid Atlantic region.

My interest in photography began while I was still at school – my father had always been a keen amateur, and when, at the age of 16 or 17, I had the opportunity to do a year’s dark room course, I jumped at it. ended up setting up a dark room at home and spent many hours with my hands in the chemicals creating prints. At that time, I was particularly focussed on working towards a career as a flute player, so photography was never more than a hobby. However, I loved it, and went out to take pictures as often as I could.

Finally, you have a finished master with great repertoire that represents your playing well, and is packaged in a way that reflects your personality and professionalism. Now what?.....

However, understanding costs and your budget is usually the first step of the recording process. There are many factors involved, so we will have to examine a typical scenario. Please understand that these figures are merely estimates and averages – there are exceptions which are too numerous to describe.

There are a few key things to think about for the day of the flute recording session. The first is environment. Remember that during a session, almost all heating/cooling systems are turned off for noise reasons. Thus, the venue might be very hot…or very cold. Please dress accordingly, or wear layers so that you can adjust as necessary. Generally, recording sessions are about the furthest things from fashion shows that you can imagine, so your favourite old t-shirt and some comfortable pants will work great.

In the last issue, we discussed several topics including repertoire choices and selecting your team of collaborators. Once you have accomplished this, we enter the “pre-production” phase, during which time several important decisions will need to be made, including venue selection and your own musical preparation. Most of these decisions should be made in consultation with your producer who will be best suited to help you select the proper venue. In a perfect world, you and your musical collaborators will travel to a concert hall that is familiar to the producer and recording engineer – this is the best way to ensure that all variables are under control. However...

Making a commercial quality recording is likely one of the most difficult endeavors that a musician will undertake. The process is rife with variables, opinions, and potential hazards: superstar heavy-metal band Metallica famously engaged a therapist to help them through the making of “Some Kind of Monster”. Beach Boys legend, Brian Wilson, abandoned the production of the album “Smile” after 72 hours of recording sessions - this unfinished record is considered a major contributing factor to his ensuing mental breakdown. Finally released 37 years after production began, Mr. Wilson is said to be in better mental health…

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.....

This article is intended to inform those who may be experiencing some discomfort, have students struggling, and/or those who are plain curious. All of the items discussed in this article are things you can try on your flute, without permanent alteration to your instrument and without major financial investment. These items are available to apply to your flute, or are do-it-yourself creations using components readily available from your local building supplies store and your local chemist...

This is the first column in a new Body Mapping series for Flute Focus. I call it “Navigation” for two reasons: one, I grew up sailing, and navigating was the most important thing in knowing where you are; two, learning our way around the body and how it works is similarly important to flute playing and musicianship. Think of it as developing an accurate Global Positioning System for flute playing...

For three years, while teaching Body Mapping lessons, I carried an outline of the body. Everywhere I went, I asked flutists to put a dot where it hurts when they play. I was shocked and horrified by the results....

Improving peak performance is on the mind of most flutists. Many attempts to improve skills are done on a daily basis. Sometimes the attempts are successful, other times teasingly slow or even impossible. While struggling to improve, questions arise such as: “What makes some flute players successful, while others, with hours and hours of practice, are not?” “Why do some flute players develop pain symptoms, and others not?” “What is preventing a flute player to progress to the next level?”...

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...

Over the course of her career Kemler has proven to be a versatile, energetic player with a knack for adapting music to her own personal styling. As a world class contemporary flutist, Kemler has shown the fluting community that you don’t have to stick with what you start with to be a successs...

"Flute repair is tedious, time consuming and exacting," Phil Unger says. "You have to be mellow." But there are compensations. Flutes need his special touch, but so do their players. Nurturing relationships with clients entails entertaining flutists from around the world over leisurely meals....  

Joseph Schwantner studied guitar with Robert Stein. Schwantner described Stein as an amazing teacher and told many anecdotes about his lessons. He explained how compassionate his teacher was when Schwantner added ‘filigree’ to the assigned music, or when he brought in his own compositions to play instead of what his teacher assigned. Recognizing that Schwantner had a talent for composition, Stein introduced music theory into his lessons. In one lesson Schwantner told his teacher that he would love to play Dvorak’s New World Symphony on guitar; to his amazement, in the next lesson Stein had arranged all the major themes from the symphony for guitar...

For many of us, we find the musical world divided into a well established series of genres and, for the most part, these categories work fairly well on their own. It is, therefore, a gifted individual who can take the worlds of Jazz, Classical and native Venezuelan music and fuse them together so seamlessly that they might never have been apart...