Music Recommendations

  • Five Inspirational Solo Flute Pieces Fit for a Recital

    Five Inspirational Solo Flute Pieces Fit for a Recital

    If you are already starting to plan your end-of-year recital, add the wow factor with one of these brilliant contemporary pieces for solo flute.

    Read more

  • Escaping the Exam Syllabus – Five Lovely Flute Albums to Explore Around Grade 5

    Albums can be a fantastic way of exploring new pieces. Whether you choose the works of one composer or decide that a wider selection of styles is more appropriate, there’s plenty to entice us away from the syllabus. Here is my pick of albums around Grade 5 level. Unbeaten Tracks for Flute and Piano (edited…

    Read more

  • Four Essential Flute Works by Female Composers

    Four Essential Flute Works by Female Composers

    I wanted to write a blog post to celebrate the talents of five ladies who have written some wonderful flute music for us. Music to gladden the heart and lift the spirits! Sonata No 1 for Flute and Piano by Eugénie R Rocherelle It’s great to find a piece of new music of a medium…

    Read more

  • Autumnal Music for Flute

    Autumnal Music for Flute

    Embrace the changing seasons with these warm autumnal treasures. Autumn in Homeland for Solo Flute by Anže Rozman This piece was written for Slovenian flutist Matej Zupan, and was premiered, by him, at the San Francisco Flute Festival 2010. The piece is nostalgic in nature and describes a summer that is slowly transforming into autumn;…

    Read more

  • Four Fresh Flute books for Back to School

    Challenging times for everyone continue, but as the new school year gets underway here are some new books that might make the task of ‘getting back to the new normal’ just that little bit easier and more fun. First Book of Classical Flute, edited by Andrea Cappellari This is a such a great book! Simple…

    Read more

  • Chris Hankin’s Mini Flute Workshops for Adults Repertoire List

    Chris Hankin’s Mini Flute Workshops for Adults Repertoire List

    This series of six mini workshops proved to be a great success. The following list highlights both the pieces I chose and the ideas put forward by the participants. This was a real team effort! Please click on the title to see more details. Workshop 1: How to survive a crisis! My List: Bordogni arr…

    Read more

  • How to Maintain Order when all Around is Chaos!

    How to Maintain Order when all Around is Chaos!

    With the Great Global Lockdown due to continue for a while yet it’s probably time for a shake-up to our practice routine. Self-isolation is a very strange situation for a musician to be in as all our activity is based around social connections. Movitation could dip at any time so it’s important to have a…

    Read more

  • So you want to be a piccolo player?

    So you want to be a piccolo player?

    Buying a piccolo is so exciting! It may be small in size but it is a powerful instrument, and eventually, you will be able to dominate everything! It can also be a very beautiful instrument and – in the right hands – an utterly magical one.

    Read more

  • “What Should I be Practising?”

    “What Should I be Practising?”

    Learning the flute (or any musical instrument) is not always a smooth process of steady improvement. We all learn in different ways with our own strengths and weaknesses, so there will be times when things can get frustrating if one feels they are not improving as much as they would like. Other factors also affect…

    Read more

  • Idyll  – The English Flute Unheard

    Idyll – The English Flute Unheard

    An Introduction to the Repertoire When my pianist Oliver Davies and I started researching suitable repertoire to include on our album “Idyll”, we had no idea how much of interest we would find across a huge range of styles and eras. The only proviso was that the composers had a connection with the Royal College of…

    Read more