Happy Flute Friday/Saturday (oops)! Earlier this week I celebrated a birthday and I began to consider how various traits associated with my Scorpio astrological sign find their way into my professional and creative life. I am a very focus individual and have been known in the past to drill short passages in the practice room until they…

Happy (belated) Flute Friday. Apologies for the late post but Daylight Savings Time this week has got me feeling a bit like Alice in Wonderland (what is this strange place shrouded in darkness by 6:00 pm??). Today’s post is devoted to the many roles flutists serve within an orchestral flute section and the different ways…

Happy Flute Friday and Happy Halloween! Today’s blog post is devoted to the subject of Fear (*cue blood curdling scream). Stage fright has kidnapped the best of all of us at one point or another. We may practice for hours, days, weeks, and months and still find that when the lights hit the stage our stomachs hit the…

Happy Flute Friday! In recent years I have performed in groups that relied heavily on tuners and metronomes to collectively establish pitch and rhythm. I am sure we have all at some point sat patiently through a group rehearsal where a well-meaning conductor has held up a tuner and asked each performer individually to correct their pitch based on the…

Welcome to Flute Friday! With Halloween just around the corner I thought I would devote today’s post to something truly terrifying for musicians (young and old) – Memorization. The very same look of horror that shines on my student’s faces the moment I write the words “from memory” in their lesson notebooks has remained unchanged throughout the years. My own reaction…