Howdy, & thanks for visiting Rachel's flute page. Rachel is a flutist with the Austin Symphony, piccoloist of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra (MI), & a private teacher to many talented flute students in the Austin area. Originally from Houston, she started playing the flute when she was 11. She received a Bachelor of Music from the University of Houston & a Master of Music from the University of North Texas, both in flute performance. She also received a post-graduate diploma from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University in Chicago. She has taught privately in Houston, Dallas, & Chicago. She has been a prize winner & finalist in flute competitions such as the National Flute Association Orchestral competition, Mid-South Young Artist Competition, & the Myrna Brown Artist competition. She was also alternate for the NFA Young Artist competition.
During the summers, she has played with the Texas Music Festival, Henry Mancini Institute (CA), International-Festival Institute at Round Top (TX), & recently played with the AIMS Festival in Graz, Austria. She was a flutist with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago in' 05-06, & has played with the Dubuque Symphony & the San Antonio Symphony. She has been a finalist/semi-finalist in orchestral flute & piccolo auditions for the Chicago, Saint Louis, Grant Park, Oregon, & Phoenix symphonies.
Rachel plays on a Powell flute with a David Williams headjoint, & a Hammig piccolo.
STUDENTS IN THE AUSTIN AREA, I am currently accepting flute students in Austin & Cedar Park . You can send me a message here, &/or visit my website for more info.
Photographers in Austin or Houston, I am very interested in having some professional flute pictures taken. Feel free to contact me here if interested, & please leave a link to your website!
Enough seriousness (& talking about myself in 3rd person, haha). I also love playing the piccolo. you can hear it in the Firebird Suite on here. I have grown fond of the instrument, even though it hurts my ears sometimes *grin* (I DO wear earplugs religiously, if anyone's wondering). I started playing picc in high school for marching band. I can play the oboe proficiently (I've played it since high school), & can teach it as well. I was quite the typical band nerd in high school. you know, the kind of student that was ALWAYS practicing, or caught playing on different instruments when she wasn't practicing her "real" instrument. Band was my life!! I particularly loved the french horn & would probably be playing that if I weren't playing the flute. I also sang soprano in in high school choir. In college, I picked up the guitar & bass guitar as diversions from classical music, no thanks to having MTV in my dorm room (hey, they actually played videos in the 90s!). I also studied bassoon & saxophone, but I have since had to focus flute. So anyway, I made this page to fill a void of classical musicians on here at the time. but there are many more now ;-) I'd love to talk to other classical nerds like myself. I'm one of the most atypical classical musicians you'd meet, but I'm as serious as they come (as far as practicing, not my personality). I am sort of a classical musician by day & a rocker by night. I love rock, particularly 80s post-punk & new-wave, 90s grunge & alternative, goth rock, EBM/industrial, & modern indie rock. On a related note, if you like similar type of music, please check out my rock band here on MySpace (no, I don't play flute in it): The Rainy Thursdays
