Flutist Phoebe Robertson has performed in concert halls across North America and Europe to great acclaim with the Orchestra of the Americas, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, and the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra. A native of Canada, she has been awarded many of her country’s most prestigious distinctions for young musicians, including Grand Prize the National Arts Centre Orchestra Bursary Competition. During the fall of 2019, her concert appearances will include a performance of the Mozart Flute Concerto in G Major as soloist with the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic, a solo recital in the Pittsburgh Concert Society Major Artist series, and a recital tour of premieres for solo flute written by the Tesselat International Composers’ Collective.
In the summer of 2018, as a member of Orchestra of the Americas, Phoebe held a residency at the Krzysztof Penderecki European Centre for Music in Luslawice, Poland, followed by a tour of Poland, Ukraine, Germany, and Scotland, gleaning a commendation for her “exciting… flickering” piccolo playing from the Hamburger Abendblatt. Phoebe has held substitute flutist positions with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra, and was granted the Award for Excellence in Flute from the National Youth Orchestra of Canada for her performances in their 2017 Edges of Canada tour. She has performed regularly with the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic, the CMU Contemporary Ensemble, and the CMU Baroque Ensemble, with whom she performed Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B Minor in April 2019.
She is equally involved in chamber music collaborations, having performed a recital of works for flute, cello, and harp in Heinz Memorial Chapel in early 2019, which included a premiere by composer Nancy Galbraith.
In addition to her excellence in performance, Phoebe has found great joy in building upon her musical knowledge through musicological research and analysis. In November 2018, she performed a lecture-recital on correspondences between the Partita in A Minor by J.S. Bach and derivative works for solo flute by contemporary composers James Newton and Jacques Hétu. In March 2017, Phoebe presented a paper at the Ottawa Graduate Music Student Conference on her research on Shostakovich’s opera The Nose and the political implications of its motivic relationships with Richard Strauss’s opera Salome.
Phoebe is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts at the Manhattan School of Music, studying with Linda Chesis and Robert Langevin. She holds a Master of Music degree from Carnegie Mellon University, where she studied with Lorna McGhee, and a Bachelor of Music degree from her studies with Camille Churchfield at the University of Ottawa. At such festivals as the Domaine Forget International Music Academy, the Orford Centre Music Festival, and The Consummate Flutist, she has recently performed for such flutists as William Bennett, Jeanne Baxtresser, Michael Cox, Paul Edmund-Davies, and Julien Beaudiment.
