About Me
Thank you for visiting my website. I’m an orchestral musician with over 30 years experience as principal flute of the Houston Symphony. I love performing, recording and creating original music - sometimes utilizing flute (Voyage of Blacwyd) (Eohippus for 4 flutes) but sometimes playing other instruments! (Piece for 5 Touch Guitars) (The Tarot Canticles).
When it comes to flute playing and helping aspiring flutists with their own playing, I am pretty lucky to have had incredible teachers and mentors — as well as my own difficulties to overcome (tendonitis, back pain, trouble with breath capacity) so nothing pleases me more than being able to share something that will help my students with their own journey.
Whether you want to win an orchestral job, or are already playing professionally, you can make tweaks to your breathing habits that will have a profound effect and make your playing stand out.
“Breathing” may sound like a boring fundamental and something you don’t need to work on anymore, but you are wrong!
I attribute getting hired for my orchestra position to the breakthroughs I had within just a few months of being introduced to new breathing concepts by my mentor, Keith Underwood.
Even though I already had 5 years of professional experience at that time—I was not beginner!—I was stumped on how work on certain things. We all get stuck at various times along our way, but I can attest that learning to link your air directly to your music is one of the most powerful tools available to you.
And it’s also kind of fun!
Many of the breathing techniques I use with my students are easy and silly-looking but effective. For instance, we might blow in and out of a tube, or some kind of special gadget, and then immediately take that tactile learning to the instrument and get instant results. Any difficulty can be targeted for improvement this way: a phrase or a group of phrases, articulations, rhythms, dynamics—the applications are endless.
That’s why on any given day, backstage before a rehearsal or a concert, you might find me reaching into my pocket for my breathing bag or doing a quick exercise with a straw as I warm up.
I’m really excited about sharing the breathing concepts that have become so indispensable to me, because many people don’t even know about them or don’t know how to put them into action to play better, make faster progress and achieve consistently good performances.
But there’s even more to it than that. Anyone who is drawn to play a musical instrument has the impulse to say something with music, and I think that’s very important.
I used to harbor the notion that some players are inherently better at playing expressively, but I’ve seen that disproved many times when someone is shown how to harness the power of their air.
Our air is truly the key that unlocks the music we all have inside.