Carol Wincenc
Biography Carol Wincenc
Carol Wincenc
Hailed "Queen of the Flute" (New York Magazine) at the outset of her, now, brilliant 48 year career, flutist CAROL WINCENC was First Prize Winner of the (sole) Walter W. Naumburg Solo Flute Competition, as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award recipient from the National Flute Association, the National Society of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Music, and Distinguished Alumni Awards from Manhattan School of Music and the Brevard Music Center. During the past two seasons she performed, recorded and gave masterclasses as an exclusive Burkart Flutes Artist in Beijing, Shenyang, Seoul, Warsaw, Prague, Venice, Nice, and Thessoloniki. In North America she performed as soloist and chamber musician from coast to coast, including Seattle, Phoenix, Dallas, Edmonton, Banff, Iowa City, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Tucson, Palm Beach, Sarasota, Philadelphia, Boston and her home city, New York. Recently she recorded an all Uebayashi album with the award winning Escher String Quartet, and video/audios in partnership with her collaborator/pianist Bryan Wagorn of the Metropolitan Opera. Most recently she and Mr. Wagorn performed to a sold out house at Weill Carnegie Hall for the "Naumburg Looks Back" series.
Delighting audiences for over four decades with her signature charismatic, high virtuosity and deeply heartfelt musicality, she has appeared as soloist with such ensembles as the Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Detroit and London Symphonies, the BBC, Warsaw and Buffalo Philharmonics, as well as the Los Angeles, Stuttgart and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestras, the latter for which she was Principal and Solo Flute from 1972-77. She has performed in countless festivals such as Mostly Mozart, Aldeburgh, Budapest, Frankfurt, Santa Fe, Spoleto, Music at Menlo, Aspen, Yale/Norfolk, Sarasota, Banff and Marlboro. The muse of today's most prominent composers, Ms. Wincenc has premiered numerous works written for her by legends Christopher Rouse, Henryk Gorecki, Lukas Foss, Jake Heggie, Paul Schoenfeld, Tod Machover, Yuko Uebayashi, Thea Musgrave, Andrea Clearfield, Shi-Hui Chen and Joan Tower. In great demand as a chamber musician, Ms. Wincenc has collaborated with the Emerson, Tokyo, Guarnieri, Cleveland, Juilliard and Escher String Quartets, and performed with Jessye Norman, Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma.
A Grammy nominee, she has recorded for Nonesuch, London/Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Telarc (Diapason D'Or Award), Music Masters (Recording of Special Merit with Andras Schiff) and Naxos (Grammophone Magazine "Pick of the Month with Buffalo Philharmonic). Ms. Wincenc created and directed a series of International Flute Festivals at the Ordway Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, featuring such diverse artists as Jean-Pierre Rampal, Herbie Mann, Steven Kujala and the American Indian flutist, R. Carlos Nakai. She had the privilege of working directly with legendary music luminaries Aaron Copland, Olivier Messaien, Rudolf Serkin, Joshua Bell, Christophe Eschenbach, Loren Maazel, Michael Tilson Thomas, Philip Glass, Andre Previn, Paul Simon and Judy Collins, to name a few!
She is a member of the New York Woodwind Quintet and a founding member of Les Amies with New York Philharmonic principals Nancy Allen, harpist and Cynthia Phelps, violist. Ms. Wincenc continues more than a quarter of a century on the faculties of The Juilliard School and Stony Brook University having mentored and graduated countless rising, flute stars commanding principal flute positions in major symphony orchestras and university professorships. She is renowned for her popular series of etudes and flute classics, the "Carol Wincenc 21st Century Flute" published by Lauren Keiser/Hal Leonard Music Publishers (available on 'Amazon'). A long time resident of New York City, she is the proud mother of singer/songwriter Nicola Wincenc (Cavernsband.com). Carol Wincenc is a native of Buffalo, NY, and was raised in a deeply active, musical family, along with her two older sisters, and under the mentorship of her violinist father and symphony conductor, Dr. Joseph Wincenc, and pianist mother, Margaret Wincenc. Having concertized on five continents, Ms. Wincenc loves nothing more than "giving back" with her music-making to communities world wide.
