Workshop: Writing For Recorder

Join Frances Blaker and Melika M. Fitzhugh for a workshop on writing for recorder. Take what you learn and submit a piece to be read during the Living Music Summit weekend!

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Frances Blaker is a recorder player with performance and pedagogy degrees from the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen, during which time she began to compose though mostly as a way of increasing her understanding music. Ms. Blaker began composing seriously in the early 2000’s. She has since been awarded month-long residencies focusing on music composition at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Otis, Oregon in April 2003, 2006, and 2011. She has received commissions to compose works for Hidden Valley Music Seminars in Carmel Valley, CA, and the Oregon Coast Recorder Society, as well as from individuals. Her most recent commission was given in April of 2020 specifically because the commissioning group realized that, in the early days of the Pandemic, musicians were suffering the loss of all their performing and teaching dates. The commission was to write a duet for recorder and double bass. This led to Seven Short Pieces which will be published in 2022 by Lost in Time Press. Other compositions have been published by Lost in Time Press and PRB Productions.

A native of Stafford, Virginia, Melika M. Fitzhugh (A.B. Harvard-Radcliffe, M.M.Longy School of Music of Bard College) studied conducting and composition with Thomas G. Everett, Beverly Taylor, James Yannatos, Roger Marsh, Jeff Stadelman, and, most recently, John Howell Morrison. Mel's compositions have been performed internationally by the PHACE Ensemble, Quarteto Larianna, the Brouwer Trio,Sarah Jeffery,Radcliffe Choral Society, Berit Strong, John Tyson,Miyuki Tsurutani, and Aldo Abreu. The artist,also a film and stage composer,is currently a member of world/early music ensembles Urban Myth, Balkan Fields,and the Quilisma Consort.