Paula Robison Named First Occupant of Donna Hieken Flute Chair at New England Conservatory
Flutist Returns to NEC Faculty Beginning in Academic Year 2005-06
Flutist Paula Robison will return to the New England Conservatory faculty next year as the first occupant of the Donna Hieken Flute Chair. The internationally recognized performer, teacher, recording artist, and author taught previously at NEC from 1973-77 and 1991-2002 and has retained close ties to the musical scene in Boston.
The Hieken chair was endowed earlier this year by Charles “Chuck” and Donna Hieken of Sharon with a $1 million gift that honors Donna’s career as a flutist. Only the second endowed faculty position created during the current $100 million Gift of Music campaign, the Hiekens’ contribution was matched by a $500,000 grant from the Nicholas Family Challenge.
“The gift is an expression of the importance we place on excellence in teaching,” said Chuck Hieken, a patent and intellectual property lawyer. “Donna and I have long recognized the stature of New England Conservatory as one of the leading institutions of advanced musical education in the world.”
Robison brings to NEC rich experience both as a performer of great virtuosity and versatility and as a teacher and clinician in demand all over the world.
Born in Nashville, TN and raised in California, Robison made her New York recital debut under the auspices of Young Concert Artists and became the first American to win First Prize in flute at the Geneva International Competition. She maintains a busy concert career, appearing annually at festivals, in recitals at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and universities throughout the country, and at Boston’s Gardner Museum, where she is co-director of the Gardner Chamber Orchestra. A founding member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, she was an artist-member of that ensemble for 20 seasons. She was also co-director with her husband Scott Nickrenz of the Concerti di Mezzogiorno at the Spoleto Festival. Robison will next appear at the Gardner Museum, April 24 in a concert where she conducts and performs concertos of Vivaldi with NEC faculty John Gibbons as harpsichordist. She will also solo with Marblehead’s Symphony by the Sea, May 21.
An active proponent of new music, Robison has commissioned over 30 works for flute including concertos by Boston’s Leon Kirchner, Toru Takemitsu, Oliver Knussen, Robert Beaser and Kenneth Frazelle. She will perform the world premiere of Michael Tilson Thomas’s Notturno, a work written especially for her, on an all-MTT program April 10 at Zankel Hall in Carnegie Hall.
Robison also has developed a special affinity for Brazilian music, which is on display on her Arabesque recording, Rio Days, Rio Nights and Brasileirinho on the Omega label. Other recordings include Mozart in Love in which the flutist teams up with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra and One Hundred Roses, featuring Neapolitan love songs, dances and rhapsodies.
A dedicated teacher, Robison has taught on conservatory faculties and led many masterclasses including a recent Franz Liszt residency in Budapest. She also maintains a private studio in New York and has published several books of flute transcriptions and teaching techniques.
For more information, visit NEC on the web at www.newenglandconservatory.edu/faculty
About New England Conservatory
Recognized nationally and internationally as a leader among music schools, New England Conservatory offers rigorous training in an intimate, nurturing community to 750 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral music students from around the world. Its faculty of 225 boasts internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. Its alumni go on to fill orchestra chairs, concert hall stages, jazz clubs, recording studios, and arts management positions worldwide. Nearly half of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is composed of NEC trained musicians and faculty.
The oldest independent school of music in the United States, NEC was founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee. Its curriculum is remarkable for its wide range of styles and traditions. On the college level, it features training in classical, jazz, Contemporary Improvisation, world and early music. Through its Preparatory School, School of Continuing Education, and Community Collaboration Programs, it provides training and performance opportunities for children, pre-college students, adults, and seniors. Through its outreach projects, it allows young musicians to engage with non-traditional audiences in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes—thereby bringing pleasure to new listeners and enlarging the universe for classical music and jazz.
NEC presents more than 600 free concerts each year in Jordan Hall, its world- renowned, 100-year old, beautifully restored concert hall. These programs range from solo recitals to chamber music to orchestral programs to jazz and opera scenes. Every year, NEC’s opera studies department also presents two fully staged opera productions at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston.
NEC is co-founder and educational partner of “From the Top,” a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by more than two hundred stations throughout the United States.
Contact: Ellen Pfeifer
Public Relations Manager
New England Conservatory
617-585-1143
epfeifer@newenglandconservatory.edu