I Love Flute Choir!

by Pam Murchison, flute teacher with Kathy's Music, LLC

When I started middle school, I began taking flute lessons with Wendy Webb Kumer.  Wendy is a true force of nature, and one of the most generous and hilarious people I’ve ever met.  I am lucky to still count her as one of my closest friends.  She claims that “world peace will be achieved when every person joins a flute choir” so it makes perfect sense that I left my first lesson with a blue folder full of flute choir music and plans to attend my first rehearsal the following Saturday morning.

When I arrived, I was very nervous to see that there were about 40 flutists who were strangers to me, but seemed to know each other really well.  By the end of that first rehearsal, I was friends with 20 of them (it was only an hour rehearsal, after allJ)! That’s the magic of flute choir. While the music profession can be notoriously cutthroat, there are many opportunities for flutists to join together in their love of all things flute, and rejoice in that camaraderie. 

Here are some things that I learned from playing in flute choir:

• Valuable large ensemble and chamber music skills.
• Information about composers from every historical period, as well as living composers.
• How to play music in a variety of genres: from classical to folk to pop.
• Exposure to new instruments, like the piccolo, alto flute, and bass flute. One of my jobs today is playing piccolo in professional orchestras.  I can trace this directly back to flute choir!
• How to be a team player.
• How to meet new people.
• How to sight-read.
• How to create performance opportunities.
• How to enrich and engage with the community.
• If playing in a flute duo is a great, playing in a flute choir is SPECTACULAR!!!!

There are so many things I learned from playing in flute choir, but my favorite is the importance of friendship and community.  Today, I am friends with some of those people who I met at that first rehearsal, and many of us have continued a lifelong relationship with the art of music.  I am constantly amazed at the creativity, passion, and resourcefulness of my flute friends, and thankful that I have been part of the flute choir tradition for over 20 years!

A recent picture of Wendy Webb Kumer, Lianne Sheplar, me, and Dan Parasky after a flute choir celebration in 2012. We were all in attendance at my first flute choir rehearsal in 1992.