Helen Bledsoe, flutist


After placing first at the Gaudeamus International Interpreter’s Competition in 1996, Helen is active as a soloist, ensemble player, teacher, improviser and author. As a soloist and full member of Cologne's renowned contemporary music ensemble musikFabrik, she has premiered works by numerous composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Brian Ferneyhough, G.F. Haas, David Lang and Louis Andriessen. She has given courses world-wide and teaches at the Conservatory of Bremen (Hochschule für Künste). Her writing has been published by Fluit Magazine (official publication of the Netherlands Flute Association), Contemporary Music Review, and has articles pending for Pan and Flute Talk.

As a soloist Helen has appeared in many well-known festivals such as Warsaw Autumn, the Dartington Summer Festival, Nordic Music Days, and the Takefu International Music festival in Japan. Other memorable performances include several appearances in the Sound Ways Festival of St. Petersburg (Russia), the Festival de Música Contemporánea in Morelia, Mexico, and a benefit concert for the Buddhist Temple Ustuu Huree in Chedan, Tuva (That's Siberia, folks, just north of Mongolia!).

Her broad musical education, beginning age 9 with the harpsichord, comes from various places on the globe:
Post-graduate studies include an Artist Diploma with distinction from the Sweelinck Conservatory of Amsterdam (with Harrie Starreveld) - and studies in Carnatic (South Indian Classical) music with the late Jahnavi Jayaprakash in Bangalore, India.
She earned a BA (Bachelor of Arts) summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh with Bernard Goldberg. There, with members of the University Collegium Musicum, she also studied recorder and traverso. Later she earned her MM (Master of Music) from Indiana University, Bloomington (with Peter Lloyd and Kate Lukas), where she also attended David Baker's Jazz course.
Between formal studies, Helen has had the privilege of studying with Robert Dick and Aurèle Nicolet (Banff 1993).

Press Reviews
"...l'extrordinaire Densité 21.5 pour flûte, émergeant tout à coup de l'ensemble, et joué de façon sublime.
Vevey Hebdo

"The highlight of the evening (Heinz Holliger's Scardanelli Cyclus) was the flute solo from Helen Bledsoe in the piece (t)air(e): she played all the unusual effects, renting outbursts and crystalline motives with great virtuosity, impassioned and with a beautiful tone."
De Volkskrant

"From the first moment her enormous musicality strikes you, as well as her coloristic capabilities."
Entr'acte

"Bledsoe is spontaneous, dares to give, and how!"
NRC Handelsblad

"... her control of the instrument and virtuosity are beyond dispute."
De Volkskrant

"Helen Bledsoe, who played the hallucinating trills of Paolo Perezzani's L'Ombra dell'Angelo brilliantly and powerfully, ... played everything from memory, even Berio's famous Sequenza, and turned out to be quite a stage-personality."
Goudsche Courant

"She is a brilliant recitor of nonsense text, sings the Cagian vocalises [from John Cage's Song Books] masterfully, and has a good command of the family of flute instruments in all conceivable techniques."
Rheinische Post

(Review of the Hans Zender CD with MusikFabrik: 5 stars for interpretation and recording technique)
"Ein Hörgenuss der besten Art"
"Enjoyable listening of the highest sort"
Tilman Urbach, FonoForum, Dec 2001