Royal Scottish National Orchestra Wind Ensemble & Carla Rees
Biography Royal Scottish National Orchestra Wind Ensemble & Carla Rees
Carla Rees
is a British low flutes specialist who has developed an international reputation for her innovative work. Her multi-faceted career encompasses solo and chamber music performance, collaboration, recording, composing, arranging, editing and teaching. She performs on Kingma System flutes (made by Eva Kingma, Bickford Brannen and Lev Levit), as well as both baroque and contemporary repertoire on baroque flutes.
Her performing work encompasses chamber music and solo recitals, appearing frequently at international festivals, including flute festivals in France, Germany, Poland, USA, Canada, Costa Rica, Japan and the UK, as well as at BEAST Feast, Bangor New Music Festival, ICMC, HCMF, Cheltenham Music Festival, Kulturforum Pax Christi, Krefeld (Germany), Open Spaces Festival Nuremburg (Germany), Tirol Easter Festival, (Austria), Lunalia Festival (Belgium) Eglise Saint-Merri, Paris (France) and La Cote Festival (Switzerland), Sonic Circuits (USA), Spark Festival (USA) and others. Recent UK performances include at Iklectik, The Forge and Café Oto (London), MTIDMU Concert Series (Leicester), Fairfield Halls (Croydon), Handel House (London) and York Spring Music Festival. Recent performances include events in the UK, Italy, Poland, Costa Rica, Japan and Brazil.
She is Artistic Director of rarescale, a contemporary chamber ensemble with whom she works to create and promote new repertoire for her instruments. She is also a member of the Goldfield Ensemble, Edison Ensemble, and plays in a trio focussing on Feldman’s music with pianist John Tilbury and percussionist Simon Allen.
An active collaborator, Carla’s projects include improvised interdisciplinary work with ecosystemic electronic composer Scott L Miller, and artist Caroline Wright. Other collaborations include the International Superflutes Collective and Hønk, the first European Contrabass Flute Ensemble.
Carla’s passion for the development of recital repertoire has resulted in the development of several hundred new works written for her by a wide range of composers. Premieres include works by Claes Biehl, Simon Emmerson, Robert Fokkens, Alexander Goehr, Sungji Hong, Daniel Kessner, Nicola LeFanu, Adam Melvin, Scott L Miller, Patrick Nunn, Michael Oliva, David Bennett Thomas, Ian Wilson, Scott Wilson and Elizabeth Winters. Her most recent project sees the creation of new contemporary works for baroque flute, which she has combined with studies in early music performance with Serge Saitta.
Carla leads rarescale Flute Academy, an acclaimed flute ensemble for university level players, for whom she arranges numerous works. The ensemble has performed in Greece, Poland and the United States, and is currently collaborating with a number of composers to create new repertoire.
An experienced recording artist, she appears on more than 20 CDs (including for rarescale records, NMC, Metier, Delphian, Heritage records and Edition Troy), including concerto recordings with the Royal Ballet Sinfonia and Ensemble Neumusik im Ostseeraum (Germany). She also appears on incidental music for film, TV and radio, including the 2018 release Mary Magdalene (music by Jóhann Jóhannsson and Hildur Guðnadóttir), and the BBC Radio 4 series Dear Professor Hawking. She has over 80 published compositions and arrangements (available through Tetractys), with recent performances of her works in the UK, USA, Canada, Japan, France, Poland and Belgium.
Carla has enjoyed a long involvement with international flute societies. She was Programme Director for two British Flute Society International Conventions, and served a four-year term as International Liaison Chair for the National Flute Association of America (NFA) and from November 2021 she will be Chair of the NFA's New Music Advisory Committee. She currently Editor of PAN, the Journal of the British Flute Society.
She completed her PhD at the Royal College of Music in London in 2014, researching extended techniques for Kingma System alto and bass flute with the support of scholarships from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the RCM. She is Programme Leader for an innovative online Music degree at the Open College of the Arts and has taught the flute at Royal Holloway University of London since 2006. In 2021 she was appointed the first Professor of Low Flutes and Contemporary Flute at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
