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Biography

Since winning the top prize in the 1978 solo Naumburg Flute Competition, Carol Wincenc has been one of the United States’ most beloved and celebrated international stars of the flute. As the vibrant muse of today’s most prominent composers, she has performed in Grammy-nominated recordings and award-winning premieres of works written for her. Wincenc will celebrate her fortieth-anniversary season in 2009–2010 with performances of six newly commissioned works by Joan Tower, Jake Heggie, Shih-Hui Chen, Thea Musgrave, Jonathan Berger, and Andrea Clearfield at New York’s Merkin Recital Hall, the Morgan Library, and the Juilliard School. Recent highlights include a performance for Elliott Carter’s one-hundredth birthday, featuring Carter’s complete works for wind, and tours featuring the Vivaldi Gardellino Flute Concerto.

Born to two remarkable musician parents who gave tirelessly to the arts in their Buffalo, New York, community, Wincenc has continued this tradition as a distinguished Professor of Music on the faculties of Indiana University, Rice University, Manhattan School of Music, and, currently, Stony Brook University and her alma mater, the Juilliard School.

Carol Wincenc has appeared as concerto soloist with the Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Houston, Detroit, St. Louis, Atlanta, and Indianapolis symphonies and has been a regular performer at numerous festivals including Marlboro, Mostly Mozart, Santa Fe, and Spoleto. In great demand as a chamber musician, she has been a frequent guest of Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series, of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and with the Emerson, Tokyo, and Guarneri string quartets. A member of the venerated New York Wind Quintet and founder of Les Amies, her trio with harpist Nancy Allen and violist Cynthia Phelps, she has also given acclaimed performances with notables such as Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

Her most recent recording on Naxos features the new music of Samuel Adler, and she premiered a flute sonata written by the composer for the one-hundredth anniversary of the Juilliard School. Carl Fisher has published her Signature Series, which includes works written for her by Foss, Górecki, Rouse, Tower, Black, Torke, Picker, Schoenfield, Sierra, Paget, and Schickele.

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Discography

Mozart at Eight Carol Wincenc, Flute Gena Raps, Piano (Naxos 8.570263)	Sonatas for Keyboard and Flute, K.10-15 Sonata in C major, K.14 Sonata in A major, K.12 Sonata in B flat major, K.10 Sonata in G major, K.11 Sonata in F major, K.13 Sonata in B flat major, K.15
Christopher Rouse Telarc	Flute Concerto with the Houston Symphony, Christoph Eschenbach conducting
Music to My Ears Arabesque	Faure: Morceau de Concours, Gossec: Tambourin, with Nancy Allen, harp (and other performances)
Joan Tower Concertos D'Note Classics	Flute Concerto with the Louisville Orchestra, Max Bragado-Darman conducting (and other performances)
J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concertos Hannsler	with the Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra, Helmut Rilling conducting
Mozart Flute Quartets Deutsche Grammophon	NOS. 1-4, K. 285, 285a, K. Anh. 171 (285b), K. 298, Rondo in G Major, with the Emerson String Quartet
Orchestral Works by Lukas Foss New World	Renaissance Flute Concerto with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Lukas Foss conducting (and other performances)
Carol Wincenc: Flute Nonesuch	Works by Griffes, Foss, Cowell, Del Tredici, Barber, and Copland with Samuel Sanders, Lukas Foss, and David Del Tredici
Mozart/Hoffmeister: Two Flute Quartets Musicmasters	Flute Quartets in G Major, K. 533 and K. 494, Flute Quartet in C Major, K. 309 with Muir String Quartet
Two American Virtuosi Musical Heritage Society	(with Eliot Fisk, guitar) Works by Giuliani, Gossec, Ravel, Milhaud, Godard, Poulenc, and Bartok
Paul Simon: Hearts and Bones Warner Brothers Records	The Late Great Johnny Ace (and other performances)
Music of George Rochberg CRI	George Rochberg: Slow Fires of Autumn (1978-79) with Nancy Allen, harp (and other performances)

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Acclaim

“An impeccable flute soloist.”

— The New York Times

“Gorecki Work Is Flutist’s Coup.”

— Chicago Tribune

“One of the top four or five flutists in the world.”

— The Buffalo News

“In Beethoven, Ms. Wincenc showed all her familiar panache.”

— The New York Times

“Virtuosity on this order of magnitude is remarkable.”

— Newark Star Ledger

“Flutist Carol Wincenc gave [the Concerto] a fine-toned, eloquent account.”

— Kansas City Star

“An impressive premiere of Rouse’s first Flute Concerto.”

— Detroit Free Press

“St. Paul orchestra in fine form with vivacious flute at forefront.”

— Star Tribune

with Nancy Allen, harp:

“Wincenc and Allen are well-matched as players. Each has an easy, fluent command of her instrument, impeccable intonation and rhythmic alertness, and they make ingratiating sounds.”

— The Dallas Morning News

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Articles
CAROL WINCENC's SPARKLING RUBY ANNIVERSARY
Review: "Presenting a Shiny Gem in an Unusual Setting"
"Flutist Evokes Poetry, Passion and Politics "
Review: "Soloists, premiere cap energetic night"

Press

CAROL WINCENC's SPARKLING RUBY ANNIVERSARY: New Works to Celebrate a Flutist’s Influence

NEW YORK TIMES
By Steve Smith
Published: April 1, 2010

You might think that in celebrating a four-decade concert career, the flutist Carol Wincenc would opt to anthologize past achievements. To the contrary, in two previous concerts during what she has termed her Ruby Anniversary Series, Ms. Wincenc has emphasized her lasting involvement with contemporary music. The final event, presented on Wednesday night in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at the Juilliard School, followed suit: playing for a full house, Ms. Wincenc offered two substantial premieres and two further works of recent vintage.

But first came Vivaldi, whose Concerto in D (RV. 428, "Il Gardellino," "The Goldfinch") is a staple of any flutist’s repertory. Ms. Wincenc fluttered and trilled brilliantly over a quintet of strings and a harpsichordist; Francesca Anderegg, the first violinist, responded stylishly in kind.

In Joan Tower's "Rising," written for the occasion, Ms. Wincenc was joined by the Juilliard String Quartet. Just over 15 minutes long, that handsomely made work posed a central opposition: Ms. Wincenc, now a songbird fighting gravity and gusty crosscurrents, played short ascending motifs that the string players seized, stretched or compressed and reoriented downward. Mournful, combative and suspenseful by turns, the piece ended not in a triumphant flourish but with an uneasy accord.

In the second premiere, "…becoming …" by Shih-Hui Chen, Ms. Wincenc alternated among flute, alto flute and piccolo in lyrical phrases that gradually grew richer during the 11-minute work. Student musicians playing on violin, cello, double bass, oboe, clarinet and French horn echoed or countered Ms. Wincenc in a slow-moving, constantly shifting aural landscape inspired by Asian performance modes, as two percussionists punctuated with clattering tam-tam, rumbling drums and shimmering vibraphone.

The biggest surprise of Yuko Uebayash'’s "Au-Delà du Temps" (“Transcending Time"), for two flutes and piano, was its vintage. Composed in 2002, the four-movement work had a Satie-like simplicity and an unabashed melodic sentimentality that strongly recalled music by Les Six, a 20th-century French composers’ collective. The flutist Tanya Dusevic Witek elegantly shadowed and soared with Ms. Wincenc; the pianist Stephen Gosling provided rapt support.

Ms. Wincenc gathered another flute partner, Jeremiah Duarte Bills, and a chorus of 40 more flutists — including students; colleagues, like Jayn Rosenfeld and Marya Martin; and Emma Resmini, a bright young prodigy — for “A Samba,” a cheery showpiece by Andrew Thomas. George Stelluto conducted the ensemble, which included percolating percussion and barely audible strings. Four lithe young dancers, choreographed by Gillian Abbott, and collective leaps by the flute choir contributed to a tone of exuberance.

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Review: "Presenting a Shiny Gem in an Unusual Setting"

NEW YORK TIMES
By Alan Koznin
Published: February 23, 2010

The flutist Carol Wincenc is celebrating the 40th anniversary of her concert debut with three performances spread through the season, each at a different hall. The programs put a spotlight on the breadth of Ms. Wincenc’s repertory, with special attention to her passion for contemporary music.

For the second installment of what Ms. Wincenc is calling her Ruby Anniversary Series, on Monday evening at the Morgan Library & Museum, Ms. Wincenc assembled a trio, Les Amies, with two principal players from the New York Philharmonic: Cynthia Phelps, the violist, and Nancy Allen, the harpist. The concert was described as the group’s debut, suggesting that these busy players will continue working together. That is good news for fans of this alluring combination of timbres: instrument for instrument, you won’t find three more accomplished players.

That said, there were valleys among the program’s peaks. Bach’s Flute Sonata in E flat (BWV 1031), arranged artfully by Ms. Allen and given a shapely performance by her and Ms. Wincenc, inhabited a sound world so lush that with the exception of the Siciliano, it hardly sounded like Bach at all. And though Ms. Wincenc and Ms. Phelps gave Devienne’s Duo in C minor (Op. 5) a spirited, bright-edged reading, the work itself lacked the substance of the music around it.

The highlights of the program were the premieres of two scores commissioned for the ensemble. In her painterly "Sunrise," Thea Musgrave makes full use of the qualities and flexibility of each instrument, opening the piece with gently chromatic rolling harp chords and a sinuous alto flute melody that the viola quickly takes up. As the work unfolds, meditative flute lines are offset by more outgoing (and, in Ms. Phelps’s performance, interestingly textured) viola figures, with the harp often taking up and expanding on the flute and viola themes.

Andrea Clearfield’s “… and low to the lake falls home …” was inspired by the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Adolf Heyduk, chosen by the composer and Ms. Wincenc. The texts, included in the program, are never heard, though their essence — particularly that of Hopkins's "Spring and Fall, to a Young Child," which inspired the introspective fourth movement — is palpable in the score. Ms. Clearfield’s consonant and melodic style, and the ease with which she moves between graceful tracery and lively, rhythmically vital writing, suits these instruments and players perfectly, and the trio gave the work the quicksilver performance it demanded.

The program also included a lovely account of Ravel’s Sonatine, a piano work heard here in a trio arrangement by the harpist and composer Carlos Salzedo. If transferring Bach’s continuo line to the harp sounded odd, here the reconfiguration of the composer’s timbres made complete sense: Ravel’s thematic strands stand in high relief, and these instrumental colors suit them.

The arrangement also made the piece, which ended the first half, an ideal counterpart to the relaxed, supple reading of Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp that closed the program.

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Flutist Evokes Poetry, Passion and Politics

NEW YORK TIMES
By Vivien Schweitzer
Published: November 10, 2009

To celebrate her 40th anniversary this season as a performer, the flutist Carol Wincenc devised a lively program for her appearance at Merkin Concert Hall on Monday evening, featuring works inspired by (among other things) the singing of a humpback whale, a nun who campaigns against the death penalty and Hasidic melodies.

Ms. Wincenc was joined by the pianist Stephen Gosling and the cellist Rafael Figueroa for George Crumb’s “Vox Balaenae” (“Voice of the Whale,” 1971), programmed in honor of Mr. Crumb’s 80th birthday this year. Wearing black half-masks and playing amplified instruments on a darkened stage, the three musicians illuminated the eerie sonorities of the work, which opens with a flute solo marked “wildly fantastic, grotesque.” One set consists of variations named after geological eras, with sea gull cries evoked in “Archeozoic.”

Mr. Gosling accompanied Ms. Wincenc with aplomb in Paul Schoenfield’s “Six Improvisations on Hasidic Melodies” (2007). Ms. Wincenc performed the contrasting sections, including the raucous “Kozatzke-Cossack Dance,” with theatrical flair and a vivid tone.

Ms. Wincenc and Mr. Gosling opened the program with “Three American Pieces,” written by Lukas Foss for violin and piano in 1944. Mr. Foss, who died in February, arranged his youthful work for flute and piano in 1984. “Composer’s Holiday,” the last of the three movements, evokes square dance and fiddle music.

The composer Jake Heggie accompanied Ms. Wincenc in the premiere of his “Fury of Light” for flute and piano, inspired by the poem “Sunrise” by Mary Oliver, which Mr. Heggie read before the performance. (One line, he pointed out in program notes, seems particularly relevant for wind players: “What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us?”)

The work opened with rippling waves in the piano, contrasting gentle passages with passionate interludes that allowed Ms. Wincenc to demonstrate her admirable technique.

The program also included Mr. Heggie’s song cycle “The Deepest Desire: Four Meditations on Love,” for mezzo-soprano, flute and piano (2002), which uses texts by Sister Helen Prejean. Her book on her activism against capital punishment, “Dead Man Walking,” inspired Mr. Heggie’s opera of the same title.

Elise Quagliata sang the works with a rich, expressive voice and passionate delivery. The cycle includes the dramatic hues of “I Catch on Fire,” which recalls an incident when Sister Prejean’s veil caught fire, and the gentle lilt of her “Primary Colors.”

See the original NYT article.

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Review: Soloists, premiere cap energetic night

PROMUSICA (performances Nov. 8 and 9 2008)
Barbara Zuck
for The Columbus Dispatch

The ProMusica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus continues its 30th anniversary season this weekend with a pair of performances at its home, the Southern Theatre. Not only are there two notable guest artists, the performance includes a world premiere and the reprise of a powerful work it commissioned a few years ago. Perhaps ProMusica audiences no longer cringe at the sight of an unrecognized work because the type of new music Russell and the orchestra tend to play is not only palatable to classically attuned ears but often interesting as well.

Mozart’s Flute Concerto in D Major is always a welcome gift as it was once again with soloist Carol Wincenc last night. Wincenc's interpretation was clean and understated, perhaps a little too much so. The soloist lavished most of her energy on the cadenzas. Overall, however, the rendition proved enjoyable as it so convincingly underscored the happy mood of this music.

The long viola solo at the beginning of Joan Tower’s Purple Rhapsody announces from the outset that this oft-neglected string instrument is going to get a hearing. And the composer gives the soloist plenty to do, with long climbing gestures throughout the first movement and a starring role thereafter. Paul Neubauer's playing made the sometimes erratic viola even in tone and quality throughout the ranges. The piece and the soloist inspired the question – why not more viola concertos?