Robert Dick's contributions to the development of the flute and its music are profound. He is known worldwide as the flute's visionary, the leading voice in the instrument's new music. Soloist, composer, teacher, author and inventor, Dick has performed his music worldwide.
As a composer, he has received prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship and a Koussevitsky Foundation of the Library of Congress commission. He writes chamber music as well as his renowned solo works, his newest pieces being Startling Stories for woodwind quintet and Gravity's Ghost for piccolo solo.
His program at UMBC will feature several of his own compositions, including Flames Must Not Encircle Sides (1980), Afterlight (1973), Piece in Gamelan Style (1978), Lookout (1989), Fish Are Jumping (1999), Air is the Heaviest Metal (2008), Eye in the Sky, for open hole alto flute (1992) and Sliding Life Blues, for flute with Glissando Headjoint®, (2001).
Presented by the UMBC Department of Music’s TNT series.
8 pm, Fine Arts Recital Hall. $7 general admission, $3 seniors, free for students, free with a UMBC ID.
With equally deep roots in classical music old and new and in free improvisation and new jazz, Robert Dick has established himself as an artist who has not only mastered, but redefined the flute. He lives in New York City and is on the faculty of New York University and the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. He holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.M. in composition from the Yale School of Music.
He has had a major impact on flute playing everywhere because of his pedagogy, including countless masterclasses throughout the Americas, Europe, Australia and Asia, the seminal books The Other Flute, Tone Development through Extended Techniques and Circular Breathing for the Flutist plus two volumes of the etudes Flying Lessons. Instructional CDs and DVDs illuminate his pieces for students and professionals everywhere.
A look at Dick's discography reveals a musician of major creative scope, with over twenty CDs of original solo and chamber works and collaborations with fellow creative musicians. Other CDs feature music by Telemann (the Fantasies for flute alone) and Jimi Hendrix. Dick's newest recording is Photosphere, in which he and pianist Ursel Schlicht musically reinvent the flute and piano duo.