Adams International Flute Festival was a Blast!

First Day of the Flute Fest Fun

Let me tell you about a weekend where music did what only music can do.

It pulled strangers from a dozen countries into the same rooms, the same silences, the same goosebumps — and sent everyone home better than they arrived.
That was Adams. And it delivered.

It started with a moment of stillness.

Friday morning, Anders Hagberg and I set up for our Meditative Hour concert. Contrabass flute. Alto flute. Regular flute. A sound card, a mic, a laptop — all packed into one remarkably compact setup. (Anders did confess he had to leave his fancy shoes at home. Priorities.)
The response? Warm. Grateful. People needed that exhale between the masterclasses and workshops. We gave it to them.

Then came the brain hacking.

Hypnotherapist Melissa Tiers — via the brilliant Shanna Pranaitis — served up some genuinely useful tools for nerves and presence. Not the usual “just breathe” advice. The real stuff.
I ducked into Mario Caroli’s masterclass next. Smart move, because the next morning, I’d be sitting across from him with my Mozart G Major Concerto. (I’m performing it in a Cathedral at the end of May — so yes, a little pre-flight check with a world-class flutist felt like a very good idea.)

Then the evening opened up.

At the welcome party, I found myself beside the one and only Paul Edmund-Davies — who pulled out his phone to show me a photo of himself with my teacher, Robert Aitken, fresh from a stint teaching in Toronto. Small world. Big talent in it.

I also had a wonderful conversation with Erika from Playing Left Handed — a site championing how much more natural it is for left-handers to play left-handed instruments. Eye-opening, and long overdue.

And back at my AirBnB — just minutes away, bless it — my host mentioned she was doing A Course in Miracles. Of course she was. Some weekends just have that energy.

Next Day of the Flute Fest Fun.

The lesson? Worth every note.

Mario Caroli was encouraging, exacting, and full of ideas. We barely made it through the exposition of the first movement — and I could have stayed another hour. That’s what a great teacher does. He makes you hungry.

The afternoon concerts were something else entirely.

A terrific flute ensemble from Frankfurt. Then — then — the Röhren Trio. Three men. Three contrabass flutes. An entire concert of music they had each written themselves.
Tilmann Dehnhard opened with two beautifully crafted compositions. Anders Hagberg’s Evening Hymn from Gammelsvenskby stopped the room — a tribute to a Swedish village in Ukraine, near Kherson, levelled by the war. Moving doesn’t begin to cover it. Ned McGowan’s 45,000 Years of Winter brought that deep, meditative quiet I never tire of.
Together, these three men made the case that contrabass flutes aren’t a novelty — they’re a necessity.

Vincent Cortvrint’s piccolo masterclass was a revelation.

He has a rare gift: he gets inside a student’s experience before he makes his point. The result is that his insights land instead of graze. And he made the room laugh while he was at it. That’s a teacher.

The evening closed with the competition winners performing with orchestra, and later, a flute choir performing Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater in a church. Look at all those flutes at the rehearsal:

Final Day of the Flute Fest Fun.

The final day. Mozart. And one unforgettable story.

I played for the wonderful Anna Garzuly. The student before me was running through the Doppler Hungarian Pastoral Fantasy, and Anna told us something I won’t forget: the Doppler brothers based the ornaments on how actual shepherds played — fast, wild, fingers flying. Nothing like the polished versions we usually hear. Completely realistic. Completely alive.
My lesson with Anna was equally generous. More proof, if you needed it, that playing for other professionals is never optional — it’s essential.

I then went straight from that lesson to a workshop on Learn Faster, Perform Better by musician and neuroscientist Molly Gebrian. I bought the book before the session was over. Check it out!

And then came Jasmine Choi.

She walked onstage for the closing concert and played her own composition — Homesick — for solo alto flute. A tribute to her mother, her best friend, who passed last year. She told us with tears close to the surface. And when she played, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
Then she turned around and performed Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor on flute with breathtaking virtuosity. Her mother was a professional violinist — she’d grown up hearing that concerto. It showed.

She finished with Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen — Gypsy Airs — in her own arrangement. Sitting next to piccolo legend Peter Verhoyen, I jokingly suggested he try it on piccolo. He said he already had. Apparently it’s easier that way. Of course it is.

Another weekend in the Netherlands. Another reminder of why we do this.

People from all over the world, drawn together by the same obsession. The same love. The same instrument.

Coming up next:

Mozart in a Cathedral on May 31st. Brandenburg 2 outdoors in July. And then — Portland, Oregon, for The Meditative Hour at the National Flute Convention.

More on all of that soon. Stay tuned, stay curious, and keep playing.