Chris Potter – Society President
Dr. Christine Potter has performed in London, Paris, Mexico City, Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Washington D.C., and many other cities in the U.S. Chris was the first of Chair of the NFA’s Low Flutes Committee, and has commissioned, premiered, conducted and arranged many works for alto and bass. 2023 will be her 19th year of organizing and teaching Alto and Bass Flute Retreats around the US. For six years, she directed a Low Flutes Choir at the James Galway Festival in Switzerland and in 2018, Chris organized an International Low Flutes Festival near Washington D.C. attended by low flutes players from around the world.
Chris has performed, conducted and taught workshops at more than 20 conventions of the National Flute Association as well as British Flute Society conventions. Her CD Flute Menagerie features solo works for alto and bass. She has many published books through American and British publishers and her Stellar Solos, Winter Duets, Alto and Bass Flute Methods, Christmas Duets and Alto Times Two are available through Amazon. Her website is known as a world-wide reference for people seeking information about low flutes. http://www.chrispotterflute.com.
Daniel Dorff
Daniel Dorff was born in New Rochelle, NY; acclaim began at age 18 with First Prize in the Aspen Music Festival’s annual composers’ competition. Dorff received degrees in composition from Cornell and University of Pennsylvania; teachers included George Crumb, George Rochberg, Karel Husa, Henry Brant, Ralph Shapey, and Elie Siegmeister. He studied saxophone with Sigurd Rascher and bass clarinet with Ronald Reuben. Dorff served from 1996 through 2015 as Composer-In-Residence for Symphony in C, in which he played bass clarinet from 1980 through 2002.
Dorff is VP of Publishing for Theodore Presser Company. A sought-after expert on music engraving and notation, he has lectured at many colleges as well as Carnegie Hall, won over 50 MPA Paul Revere Awards for Excellence in Music Engraving, and advised the leading notation software companies.
Dorff’s compositions have been published by Presser, Fischer, Keiser/Southern, Shawnee, Mel Bay, and Kendor, and recorded on Albany, Bridge, Centaur, Crystal, Azica, and many other labels. Performers have uploaded over 500 YouTubes of his compositions and arrangements, which have received over 1,400,000 views.
Debbie MacMurray
Debbie MacMurray has 25 years of experience with non-profit organizations in a variety of roles – president, secretary and treasurer. She was treasurer for the NFA for five years and has had 20 years of for profit experience as Regional Director of Operations for Luxottica/Pearl Vision.
Mariana Gariazzo
Mariana Gariazzo holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Texas (2005) at Austin, a Master of Music from Yale University (2001), and a Bachelor of Music from Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Argentina. She has been a recipient of several awards and distinctions in solo and chamber music categories including Fundacion Antorchas, Juventudes Musicales, UNC Orchestra competition, and the Robert Wilson Award for Outstanding Woodwind Performance at Yale. In addition, she has been awarded multiple grants in the scholarship of teaching such as the Innovative Pedagogy Grant, the Arts Enhancement Grant, and the Melbern G. Glasscock Center Co-Sponsorship Grant, the Academic Innovation Grant, the High Impact Innovation Practices Grant, and the Advancing Climate Together Grant at Texas A&M University.
Gariazzo serves as President of the Chicago Flute Club and chairs the National Flute Association Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Current performance projects consist of presenting her new CD at national and international venues and inspiring generations of flutists to optimize performance through nutrition. As an advocate for low flutes, she actively collaborates with composers in commissioning, recording and performing new music for C, alto and bass flutes. Her debut CD, Revelations, was released by MSR Classic Records in 2021.
Ece Karsal
Ece Karşal was born in İzmir, Turkey and began her music education at Istanbul University State Conservatory at a young age. She also graduated from the Mathematics Department of Marmara University Faculty of Science during her conservatory education. She completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at Istanbul University State Conservatory and served as a flutist and piccolo player in the orchestra. In 1999, they started working at Kocaeli University Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Music, where they also served as the department head and vice dean during the establishment phase. She completed her doctoral studies at Marmara University and conducted post-doctoral studies in Frankfurt and Toronto. Her doctoral thesis investigated the relationship between mathematics and music and conducted research on the relationship between mathematical and musical abilities and the effects of music on cognitive performance. She has authored a book titled “Mathematics with Songs” and her flute method book was published in 2015 by Pan Publishing House.
She has performed as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestra musician in numerous concerts and masterclasses and has also recorded and realized projects. In 2011, she recorded the Triole album, which consists of selected works from the flute, cello, and piano repertoire. In 2015, she founded the Marmara Flute Orchestra as part of a project. With the instruments provided under the project, they established the first flute orchestra in Turkey that includes the entire flute family, and created a repertoire of flute orchestra works by Turkish composers. The orchestra has participated in important festivals both domestically and internationally, achieved significant success in a short period of time, and won two first-place awards in the “Classical Music-Orchestras” category and the “Most Professional Group” category at the youth festival held in Bulgaria in 2018. In 2019, they gave a successful concert at the European Flute Ensembles Festival held in Poland, and in 2020, they performed a joint concert with “Flûtes d’Azur” under the direction of Mauricio Lozano as part of the Flutissimo Festival in France. She conducted Turkish Flute Ensemble at the second Europian Flute Ensembles festival in Portugal in 2023. She is the founder, artistic director, and conductor of the Marmara Flute Orchestra and one of the founders and performers of Istanbul Flute Ensemble where she plays contrabass flute.
Ece Karşal currently holds the position of flute professor and department head at Marmara University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Music, having also founded the department. facebook.com/profile
Paige Dashner Long
Paige Dashner Long is an internationally recognized flute choir director, contrabass flutist and award winning composer. Currently Ms Long, an Altus Artist, directs the Metropolitan Flute Orchestra in summer residence at New England Conservatory, the Daytona State College Flute Choir and the Florida Flute Orchestra. As an active guest flute clinician and ensemble director, she has led workshops and directed flute ensembles for music schools in France, Germany and Mexico, as well as for universities and flute associations throughout America.
As an active performer, Paige currently plays flute and harpsichord with the Daytona Solisti Chamber Orchestra and is the director of the Chamber Players of Palm Coast. As an active teacher, she is part of the music faculty at Daytona State College in Daytona Beach, FL.
As an accomplished composer, she is a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and her compositions and arrangements can be found at Falls House Press, a subsidiary of Theodore Presser Company and ALRY Publications.
As a low flute specialist, she has been featured on CNN’s Great Big Story, FOX News Orlando and has written several articles for Flute Talk Magazine as well as for flute association newsletters throughout the country. In addition to her flute activities, she is the director of music at Palm Coast United Methodist Church in Palm Coast, FL.
Robin Pope
Robin Pope holds an MBA from CU Boulder’s Leeds School of Business with a concentration in marketing, and was awarded the 2020 Full Time MBA Award. She has been involved in music from a young age and sang in choirs through high school and college, performing in Italy, LA, and at Mackey Auditorium and Boettcher Concert Hall. She currently works at Boulder Public Library and is an avid reader. She posts about books and more on her website readingbuffs.wordpress.com and her instagram @robin.c.pope.
Carla Rees
Carla Rees is a British low flutes specialist who has developed an international reputation for her innovative work. Her multi-faceted career encompasses solo and chamber music performance, collaboration, recording, composing, arranging, editing and teaching. She performs on Kingma System flutes (made by Eva Kingma, Bickford Brannen and Lev Levit), as well as both baroque and contemporary repertoire on baroque flutes.
She completed her PhD at the Royal College of Music in London in 2014, researching extended techniques for Kingma System alto and bass flute with the support of scholarships from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the RCM. She is Programme Leader for an innovative online Music degree at the Open College of the Arts and has taught the flute at Royal Holloway University of London since 2006. In 2021 she was appointed the first Professor of Low Flutes and Contemporary Flute at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
An experienced recording artist, she appears on more than 30 CDs (including for rarescale records, NMC, Metier, Delphian, Heritage records and Edition Troy), including concerto recordings with the Royal Ballet Sinfonia and Ensemble Neumusik im Ostseeraum (Germany). She also appears on incidental music for film, TV and radio, including the 2018 release Mary Magdalene (music by Jóhann Jóhannsson and Hildur Guðnadóttir), and the BBC Radio 4 series Dear Professor Hawking. She has over 80 published compositions and arrangements (available through Tetractys), with recent performances of her works in the UK, USA, Canada, Japan, France, Poland and Belgium.
Alexa Still
Alexa’s many recordings on the Koch International Classics label have garnered unanimous praise: “impeccable in technique and taste, seductive in phrasing” (Stephensen Classical C D Guide). “Still plays… so convincingly I cannot separate her from the music” (American Record Guide), “whatever she plays sounds musical in every turn of the phrase” (Gramophone), “a stunning showcase for the astonishing Alexa Still” (Fanfare). Alexa studied in New York (SUNY Stony Brook), won competitions including the New York Flute Club Young Artist Competition, and, East and West Artists Competition and then returned home as principal flute of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at the age of 23. Other awards include a Churchill Fellowship and a Fulbright. She eventually left the NZSO to devote more time to solo engagements and teaching, based first at the University of Colorado at Boulder, then the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and now at Oberlin Conservatory, USA. Alexa has performed and taught in England, Germany, Slovenia, Turkey, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Canada, Korea, China, Australia, New Zealand, and of course across the United States. Alexa has also served her profession as President of the National Flute Association (USA), and regularly writes for flute journals across the globe. Her flute was made by Brannen Brothers with gold or wooden headjoints by Sanford Drelinger. When her flute is in its case, Alexa is an avid motorcyclist, and she shares a daughter and two dogs with her husband.
The International Low Flutes Society 