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Printer-Friendly ModeFlutist quartet performs at Founders Hall
October 31, 2005 —
The female flutist quartet Flutee performed pieces from the Golden Age of the Flute, featuring music from 1685 to 1835, on Sunday, Oct. 23 at Founders Hall.
The quartet, highly respected and recognized in Michigan, is based out of SVSU and was founded in 1987. Flutee's members are Mary Anderson, Kim J. Teal, and Pamela Rowe. For Sunday's performance, Tess Miller stood in as the fourth flutist. Anderson is also a faculty member at SVSU.
The performance was small, but appreciated. The chosen pieces introduced the audience to a total of six different types of flutes, the most common of which were the piccolo and the concert flute. Other flutes used were the bass, E-flat soprano, alto, and tenor flutes. Each flute brought a different sound to the quartet.
Flutee also treated the audience to the experience of hearing the concert flute on a woodenhead piece, which gives the flute a more traditional sound, as all flutes used to be made of wood.
The quartet played a total of 11 different pieces. Each member of Flutee played a piece by herself on one of the unusual flutes that they specialize on.
Anderson played from Tunes for the Bullfinch, an anonymous piece, on the bass flute. This piece was composed to sound like a high-pitch recorder sound, but Anderson did a lovely job playing it on the deep-sounding flute.
Miller played Les Folies D'Espagne, by Marin Marais, on alto flute. This piece had a nice Spanish dance rhythm that was exciting and up-beat to listen to.
Johann Sebastian Bach's Sarabande was played by Rowe on the tenor flute. This piece was composed to be an unaccompanied flute solo on the concert flute. Rowe played it nicely on the tenor flute, which is slightly smaller than the concert flute.
Kim J. Teal played Variations on Ah, vous, dirai-je, maman by Charles Nicholson on the E-flat soprano flute. This piece started off sounding like the modern version of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."
The best piece of the night was Quintet in B Minor, by Jean Baptiste Loeillet. For this piece, Flutee had Cheryl Cheger-Timm, on harpsichord, and Tomas Zantow, on bassoon, join them. For not playing together on a regular basis, all six musicians did an excellent job.
Flutee will be presenting a special international composers' showcase concert at SVSU on March 19, 2006 so that new, generally unpublished works for flute quartet can have a performance venue to aid in getting the works more widely known and possibly published.
Flutee will announce in January on its Web site which works have been selected. The quartet's Web site address is