MASTER CLASS TOPICS
The Whole Flutist - Yoga Principles as they relate to Flute Playing
As a certified yoga instructor since 1999, Laura has enjoyed sharing the principles of this ancient practice with flutists in order to help facilitate greater ease and freedom in their music making. This workshop illustrates how yoga breathing techniques increase lung capacity and breath control, balance poses enhance concentration, restorative poses help manage performance anxiety, and muscle strength and agility create resilience against injury.
Be Kind – How Following Your Bliss CAN Pay the Rent
As the Co-Artistic Director and founder of the Painted Sky Music Festival since 2002, author of the Carl Fischer Publication, “Expressive Etudes for the Flute”, and producer of the highly acclaimed recording “Echoes of a Blue Planet”, Laura has valuable insight to offer young musicians forging their own unique careers. This workshop does not simply provide the usual “how-to” promotional skills for our profession. Instead Laura discusses how important a healthy attitude, philosophy, and personality are to succeeding in our field.
Good Vibrations –What Beautiful Sound Feels Like
After years of body awareness training in yoga, Alexander Technique, and various athletic pursuits, Laura has learned to teach flutists how to feel their way to good tone production. She uses a keen understanding of anatomy and the physics of tone production to help students identify sensations in the body which relate to resonance and freedom of expression. This workshop introduces several exercises which heighten students’ body awareness as well as their ability to reproduce ideal sensations which lead to glorious flute playing.
Love Your Etudes - Playing Studies as Performance Pieces
As a teacher, Laura encourages mindful practice and passionate performance to help students cultivate their musicianship and focus. She develops strategies to make practicing fun and she believes that one can find joy in practicing long tones, scales and even etudes. Since the latter are often approached mechanically with great effort and little pleasure, she has selected twenty gems of substantial merit in her book, Expressive Etudes for the Flute, from which to teach in order to inspire students to interpret these works as concert pieces.
