Douglas Worthen
My work as a flutist has had many chapters. Growing up in New Hampshire, I began private lessons with some of the UNH students, including Brooks DeWetter Smith (now at UNC Chapel Hill) and Katherine Borst Jones (at Ohio State University). The enthusiasm of these people was an inspiration to me in those important years. I went to the Hartt School in Hartford, and finished degrees in Music Education and Music Performance in three years. In retrospect, I think I was in too much of a hurry to grow up and get out into the world. In 1974, I won a full scholarship to a fantastic music school in Montreux, Switzerland. This helped me see the value of languages (French and German) and established my first connections with European musicians. I stayed on in Europe until the late seventies and did some recording and many chamber music concerts, as well as teaching private students and taking lessons and master classes with the greatest artists of the era, including Rampal, Galway, and Nicolet. It was more their individual personalities and aspirations that I picked up as I worked with these men than just the technical art of playing. Rampal was always performing new works that he had discovered, especially baroque works. Nicolet had left Berlin Philharmonic and become a champion of the most avant-garde composers. Galway’s agent, Michael Emerson, was really urging him through RCA to appeal to the mass audiences. I think my taste became a fusion of all three views, but my vehicle of actualizing my goals became a combination of teaching, publishing, recording, and performing.
In the late seventies, I began working with a trio consisting of harpsichord, cello and flute. I found a stable part-time teaching position at Phillips Exeter and bought a house in Durham, NH. Although the repertoire of eighteenth century music was vast, I wasn’t satisfied with the balance of loudness or timbre of the modern flute with respect to the other instruments. The flute was too loud most of the time; so equal counterpoint in the treble of the harpsichord as well as the bass line was all but obscured. I got tired of repressing my dynamics all the time, and decided to master the original baroque wooden flute. Learning the baroque flute was a wonderful challenge. In 1985 I auditioned with Christopher Hogwood for the Handel & Haydn Society’s second flute position and continued performing with that ensemble regularly until the late nineties.
In 1989, I moved to Walnut Hill School for the Performing Arts, where I became head of the Music Dept. Two years of administrative responsibilities was plenty, and I returned to Durham in ‘91 feeling war-torn but ready to begin again. Getting back into the musical community was difficult. Younger players had been hired in my absence, and performance opportunities were scarce. I launched into a recording project of the works of Sigfrid Karg-Elert, with pianist Janice Weber. This gave me an incentive to really pour myself into my practicing on the modern flute.
After my recording with the Mannheim Quartet on period instruments (1988), I was ready to return to a broader range of repertoire that included contemporary composers. I really wanted these works to be known beyond my recording, and together with Linda True an adult student in Nashua, created Falls House Press. As co-owners, we immediately began seeking more flute repertoire including works for flute choir. This was a natural for us at the time. Linda was performing in The Nashua Flute Choir and I was conducting it. We had a means of trying out new scores as well as a regular contact to review the constant flow of new works sent to us for consideration. As we began establishing relationships with composers and learning how to research out-of-print works, our catalogue grew. In 2001 I published The Andersen Etude Practice Book. I wrote it to help with the instruction of performance skills such as rubato and breathing, as well as many other flute-related skills. Now offered with English, French, or Japanese text, it is in its second edition.
Each year we exhibit at the National Flute Convention and have created a website offering our works to a worldwide market. In the spring of 2007, FHP agreed to a distribution contract with Theodore Presser. Our publications are now in stock in stores in Japan, Singapore, Australia, Central Europe, and of course here in America.
Performance situations have become more and more diverse. While keeping up my early music interests, performances with the North Shore Music Theatre in Miss Saigon, Showboat, and other musicals added a fun and challenging dimension to my life. I enjoyed learning the different Chinese flutes for the “Miss Saigon” score, as well as the wonderful alto flute part in Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music”. I also appreciated being able to repeat a program as many as 18 times in these performances…the “band” achieves a level of precision that only comes from that kind of repetition. I continue to enjoy performing with the local orchestras, Nashua, Indian Hill, and Concord’s Granite State Symphony Orchestra.
After 9/11 I traveled abroad a great deal. I was on one of the first flights out of Boston to present a Masterclass in Autun, France and then a return to my friends in Switzerland. Swiss flutist, Christian Delafontaine, and I have had somewhere in the order of 15 exchanges over a period of about 20 years. 2002 and 2003 included solo tours of Japan, including the Biwacho Contemporary Music Festival. In October 2003 I returned to Switzerland to perform with Christian and members of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra. Then we continued on to Moscow and then Ufa for my first tour of Russia. We returned later in the month to perform outside of Geneva, and then finally ended up in Amsterdam. In 2004 I was awarded an artist fellowship from the State of New Hampshire. Beginning in the fall of 2005 I returned to my Alma Mater, Hartt School of Music, where I finished (Sept. 29, 2007) my Doctorate in Flute Performance with John Wion, while also teaching a variety of courses in music history.
Last updated November, 2007
Falls House Press
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