For the Professors' Recital on the first day of the Summer Flute Academy, I got a chance to perform a contrabass flute duo with Stephanie Wagner, and Jonathan Ayerst on piano. This was a sort of second baptism of my new Eva Kingma Contrabass Flute, which is as fun to play as it is cool to look at! (At the 1st Summer Flute Academy I played 3 notes on Stephanie's Contra and it was love…what can I say?)

We played an adaptation I wrote for contrabass flute duo and piano of the famous aria "Dido's Lament" from Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas". Gloriously noble, sad music. I thank Stephanie for playing the harder part, and Jon for being the top-notch "backup band". Soon I hope we'll have all our Academy videos online—I'll let you know here as soon as they're up—but for now here's a photo!

Two Kingma Contrabass Flutes at the 4th Summer Flute Academy

You might think, if you are not TOO TOO young, that I'm referring to the classic Simon and Garfunkel album, the one I grew up listing to endlessly, putting the needle back into the groove again and again. (This was way before vinyl was "vintage", it was just "a record"). What a fabulous album! Want to know how to balance or pace a program or a CD? Look no further. "Sounds of Silence", technically.

But no, I'm actually talking about the SILENCE of having my cell phone in the shop!! THIS, folks, is real silence! No calls, no alerts, no beeps, no apps…and… no distractions! It is a drastic measure, and I don't recommend smashing the screen on your phone to experience it, but there's something magic, too! Time that is wider-open. Silence that you can sink into. (In short: I got a lot of tidying up done!).

As musicians, we concentrate on the SOUNDS we make, but the SILENCE in between is always important, too. The silence before a piece begins, the silence after—sometimes big, sometimes tiny. The silence of an empty strong beat (thanks again, Karl Kohn). The silence where the music breathes. Here's a visual representation of lots of silence and the punch of just a little bit of "sound"—

Low Flutes: Purcell Redux

The Sound of Silence