What are you most looking forward to in the 2021 season?

I’m really looking forward to the variety of music in the 2021 season. Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony will be a big one - it’s a work that really shows off the full force of an orchestra, and is best experienced live! Tūmahana is also going to be one of the highlights, with the combination of live music, dance, aerial arts, and storytelling. And it would be remiss as a flutist not to mention Debussy’s La Mer - with incredible wind writing and colourful orchestration it’s one of my favourite orchestral works - the last time I performed it was actually in the National Youth Orchestra sitting alongside CSO Principal Oboe Jenny Johnson, so we’re both looking forward to getting to share that music together again, after all the years in between.

There’s also a lot of new community engagement work for me to look forward to - I’m involved in many of the more creative projects this year, including Tukutuku and Song, in collaboration with Jolt Dance.

You were part of the team of players that took up residence in Kaikōura last year for the Karawhiua! Let’s Play programme. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience and what were some of the highlights?

We spent a week working on a range of music projects at both Kaikōura Primary School and Hāpuku School, a school that integrates te reo Māori into the curriculum. I learned a lot just from seeing how the teachers worked with their classrooms, and it was inspiring to see how quickly the children picked up new skills, and grew in confidence over the week. It was also great to see my new CSO colleagues in action, and learn more about their strengths in teaching and creating, as well as in performing.

One highlight was watching the children at Hapuku School each make a clay flute, spending time delicately shaping a mouthpiece and figuring out how to find a sound on it. We incorporated some of these clay flutes and other taonga pūoro from the area into a piece of music with students from Kaikoura Primary School for the final concert - a song on bucket drums about climate change, interspersed with a soundscape of clay flute bird song and nature sounds using stones collected from the beach. This was a special way of using music from both traditions to build a connection between the two schools and the local community at the concert.

What were you doing before you joined the CSO?

I’ve been living in Montreal, Canada for the past four years - enduring cold winters, and attempting rehearsals and teaching in French! I finished a Doctor of Music at McGill University last year, and was also working as a sabbatical replacement at McGill, teaching flute, chamber music, and an orchestral excerpts class for undergraduate woodwind students. I freelanced in orchestras, but some of my main performance work was a duo with Canadian guitarist Steve Cowan (we’re doing a tour with Chamber Music NZ in 2022, postponed from last year), and with the Improvisation Workshop Project, a free improv ensemble run by French jazz pianist Jean-Michel Pilc.

What inspired you to become a professional musician?

The recorder was the initial musical inspiration, as it is for many, back in primary school. I grew up in Palmerston North, and was fortunate to have a combination of supportive parents and very good first music teachers, which really set me up for taking music further.

I’ve always been on a path that’s led me to playing the flute professionally, but it’s been a path with many twists and turns, and with a lot of very rewarding work in the broader music industry thrown in. I spent a number of years freelancing with orchestras and teaching flute while working full-time as RNZ Concert’s Digital Content and Programme Producer, and then as Chamber Music NZ’s Marketing and Communications Executive. When I moved to Montreal I kept up this idea of the “portfolio career,” working as the Project Manager of a large-scale $2.5 million grant project called ACTOR (the Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration), and managing communications for the Music Research department at McGill University - so although the flute has always featured heavily, I have to also credit my other professional pursuits - in music, but not specifically in performance - for shaping me into the musician I am today.

Who has influenced you the most during your career?

Too many people to list! Certainly my past teachers, especially Timothy Hutchins from the Montreal Symphony, Dave Gossage (a jazz flutist and session musician in Montreal), Christina Jennings (my master’s professor at the University of Colorado Boulder), and Kirstin Eade from the NZSO, who really encouraged me to pursue overseas study at a time when I didn’t know if I was good enough. Elise Bradley is another one - she conducted the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir when I was in it, and she’s influenced an entire generation of young kiwi musicians, many of whom have gone on to professional careers in the arts.

I’ve also been influenced by a lot of impressive colleagues over the years - especially my fellow cohort members of the Global Leaders Program, who are scattered around the world doing incredible things in music for social change. Through them I got to experience first-hand that there’s more to classical music than the practice room and the concert hall, and it gave me new-found inspiration in terms of what my career could look like.

What’s on your summer playlist?

I’ve been enjoying getting back into listening to new kiwi music that I’ve missed since being away, and keeping up with music being made by friends around the world in these challenging times. I’ve also been busy this summer listening to edits of a recording project I finished up at the end of last year - four new works for flute and piano, funded by Creative NZ. Look out for those on RNZ Concert and SOUNZ soon!