Though each member of PANdemonium 4 work at different universities, the flute quartet finds harmony when performing together.
The quartet, comprised of Alison Sincoff, Lindsey Goodman, Kimberlee Goodman and Lisa Jelle, will make its debut Monday at 7:30 p.m. in the Glidden Recital Hall. The event is free for those who attend.
Sincoff, a professor of flute at OU, reached out to the other women in the group in the summer of 2016. The ensemble had its first rehearsal that August and had a few meetings after that. Sincoff said the women she reached out to were “the ones” and that they have all been “gelling very well.”
Sincoff started playing the flute when she was in fourth grade. She was taught by her father, who was a woodwinds instructor at a small college in Kansas, where she grew up. She would go with her father to his classes and act as a “guinea pig,” as she was also taught by the students in his class, Sincoff said. Her mother, she said, was an organist, so music was a “big part” of her family.
“I just love being able to feel myself singing and sharing music through this instrument. ... I play on a gold flute right now, so I love thinking about my sound emulating the richness of the metal,” Sincoff said, regarding her favorite part about playing the instrument. “I love embodying the instrument’s’ ability to resonate.”
A flute quartet is comprised of four variations of the woodwind instrument — a piccolo, a regular C Flute, an alto flute and a bass flute. The bass flute plays an octave below a C Flute and has a “mellow and robust sound,” Lindsey, a professor at West Virginia State University and Marietta College, said. By utilizing the different flutes, the group can sound more diverse, she added.
Lindsey started formally learning how to play the flute when she was 10 years old, but had experience with the instrument prior to that.
“I don’t remember a time when I didn’t play the flute,” Lindsey said. “My first memory is of the flute. I was self-taught and taught by my dad, who was an ametuer musician from the time I was a toddler, but I started formal study when I was 10.”
Kimberlee, an adjunct professor of flute at Otterbein University, has been playing the flute since she was eight years old and said it was a “love affair” from that moment on. When Kimberlee first started playing the instrument, she had difficulties controlling her breath due to asthma.
“I think it was the best thing that could have happened to my asthma because you have to control your breath so much when you play a wind instrument, and I think that was really a fantastic thing for my health,” Kimberlee said.
To help with the physical strains of playing and teaching the flute for long hours, Kimberlee said she sees a massage therapist and chiropractor. The playing position for flutists differs depending the setting the musician is in. Flutists in a marching band are taught to take up as little space as possible and for the flute to be straight out to the side, but in concert band settings, Kimberlee said, she teaches her students to expand the circumference of their bodies by extending the right hand away from the right shoulder. Broadening the player’s circumference alleviates strains on the back.
Some of the guiding principles to starting the flute quartet, Lindsey said, was due to the members’ experiences with coaching similar ensembles in their day to day lives and the repertoire for the ensemble.
“This is the kick off to this new venture and so I’m really excited to share this new group with audiences,” she said. “The beginning of something is always so fun, right?”
