Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger III, who heroically piloted US Airways Flight 1549 to a safe emergency landing in the Hudson river, was first-chair flutist in his high school marching band, according to the New York Times.
(It seems contradictory to refer to the high school marching band as having “chairs.” I also object to the Times’s use of the word “flautist.”)
No word on Captain Sullenberger’s recent flute-playing activities, if any. It’s probably a safe guess that he doesn’t get much practice time in these days. I would just like to think I have something in common with the guy.
I’ll keep this short: there are new bretpimentel.com t-shirts available, and everything in the store (shirts and the PDF of my book, Woodwind Basics) is priced at 1/3 off through Christmas Eve 2018 if you use coupon code reeds2018. Your purchases help pay for hosting and other site costs, and otherwise support what I’m doing on the site.
This year was my first time attending the National Flute Association‘s annual convention, held this year in Charlotte, North Carolina.
I’ve been to conferences of all the other major woodwind organizations in the US (IDRS, ICA, NASA), and here are some things that I think the NFA did exceptionally well:
Organization and planning. From what I could tell, nearly everything ran smoothly and according to plan.
Engaging younger players. There were a number of competitions and masterclasses for high school and college students, and a Saturday “Youth Day” for flutists aged 8-13.
Engaging non-professional flutists. My sense is that the NFA has a stronger amateur contingent than the other organizations, and that they are working to ensure its future.
Appealing to broad musical interests. In my opinion, the NFA is doing a better job than anyone, including NASA, of integrating jazz into their convention in a serious way, and is integrating historical instruments at least as well as the IDRS. Ethnic flutes also got some good representation. Thursday night’s big feature concert was Baroque flute, and Friday’s was world music. Saturday’s concert was more standard concerto fare, but with a strong jazz representation. Kudos to the NFA for acknowledging that there is life beyond conservatory repertoire lists, and to its members for seeming to genuinely embrace and enjoy the varied offerings.
Like the other major woodwind conferences, the NFA’s is packed with so many events that it’s impossible to get to everything you want to attend. Here are a few personal favorites among the things I saw and heard (in no particular order): Read More “Report: National Flute Association Convention 2011”
I have just released version 0.6 of the Fingering Diagram Builder. It’s almost a maintenance release, that mostly just attempts to fix a few problems and add a little polish. Your suggestions and bug reports are, as always, welcome (as are your donations, social media pings, links, etc.). Go play around with it or read on for the details.
New hotness
Here’s what’s new:
The user interface got a minor facelift and some usability improvements. For example, if you dare to use the “Keywork details” tab, you may notice that the menu stays a little more manageable size-wise, and if you’re working at a desktop monitor you can tweak things without losing sight of the diagram.
Several of you wrote in to point out that the Dropbox functionality had become broken. Dropbox changed some things on their end and I got a little behind on making the necessary adjustments on my end. Long story short, the FDB now uses Dropbox’s slick little popup thing if you want to save your fingering diagrams there. You might have to enable popups for the FDB in your browser. Also, if you’re not using Dropbox yet, how do you even survive?
Valved brass instrument diagrams have been around since version 0.2, but they were little-known because for some reason I lumped them in with the simple-system flutes. I know. They are much easier to find now. You can stop writing in to ask if I know of a website that does diagrams for brass instruments.
If you are into creating custom styles, you can now include your selected instrument as part of those if you wish.
The Creative Commons license has been updated to version 4.0. That really just means that some of the legalese underlying it has changed. You’re still totally free to use the diagrams for your not-for-profit projects, or to hit me up and make the necessary arrangements if you want to use the diagrams to make something you’re going to sell. (Here’s a cool example of something made with literally one bazillion FDB diagrams: it’s a book.)
I did a bunch of other stuff under the hood to improve stability and speed and to lay groundwork for future improvements.
As always, there are more improvements in the works. I usually wait until I have more of a “wow” feature to show off before doing a release, but I wanted to get a fix out there for the Dropbox users. Enjoy!
The composer, Dr. Sy Brandon, will be in residence at the Delta State University Department of Music on Monday, Feb. 28. The agenda (forthcoming) will include an open rehearsal of Divertissement (with pianist Kumiko Shimizu) and a Q&A session with Dr. Brandon.
There’s a nice interview by Joan Sparks at the Flute Pro Shop blog, with two woodwind doublers who happen to be married to each other, Tereasa Payne and Simon Hutchings. They discuss doubling, careers, and married life.
I can’t imagine being in a marriage with anyone other than a musician. Everyone makes sacrifices for what they value in life, but the time and commitment involved in becoming, and being, a professional musician…it’s so time consuming, and emotionally challenging – I imagine it’s like being married to an athlete. That being said, given that we are both woodwind doublers, with different “primary” instruments, our marriage is perfect (in so many ways!!!) in the sense that we are able to advise and support each other to a greater degree than almost any situation would allow.
This year was my first time attending the 
