Historical
Piano Concerts Series
About
the Musicians
Mary Oleskiewicz
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Hailed as “one of the greatest baroque flutists of our time” (American Record Guide), Mary Oleskiewicz
enjoys a career as performer-scholar. After winning first prizes in
both the National Flute Association’s Baroque Flute Artist and Doctoral
Dissertation Competitions, she quickly established herself as an
international performer and master teacher. An authority on music of
the Bach family and of music at the 18th-century court of the
flute-playing Prussian King Frederick ‘the Great,’ her acclaimed
musicological essays, prize-winning editions, and commercial recordings
have focused on the music of Quantz, C.P.E. Bach, King Frederick, and
J.S. and C.P.E. Bach. A solo artist for the Hungaroton Classic and
Naxos labels, her last CD release is a world premiere of 18th-century
flute concertos, which she rediscovered in Russia and recorded with
Miklós Spanyi and Concerto Armonico. She is currently completing a book
of essays, J. S. Bach and His Sons, Bach Perspectives vol. 11 (Indiana
University Press), for the American Bach Society.
This past
spring Mary toured China as a soloist on modern and baroque flutes with
pianist and harpsichordist Yuan Sheng, and was hosted by UCLA, the Bob
Cole Conservatory and the Los Angeles Flute Guild to perform programs
of Bach’s flute music and to give modern and baroque flute
masterclasses. Her flutist career has taken her to Australia, Japan,
Mexico, and throughout Europe. She has played North American concerts
at New York City’s Lincoln Center and The Library of Congress,
Washington D.C., and has performed with ensembles including the Arcadia
Players, Boston Pro Musica, Chicago’s Baroque Band, and La Fontegara
(Mexico City). She has also performed as a regular member of the Handel
and Haydn Society Orchestra and the Youngstown, OH Symphony Orchestra.
She is currently principal flutist of the Boston-based Newton Baroque
Orchestra.
Mary also dances and teaches Argentine tango, plays
the bandoneòn, and improvises on Indigenous North and South American
flutes. Currently she serves as Associate Professor of Music at the
University of Massachusetts, teaching flute and courses in European
music and Latin American music and dance. She has been a frequent guest
professor and lecturer at Queens College, New York City and during the
past academic year has been an invited guest artist in Tango at Harvard
and Tufts Universities. Fluent in German, she has held the position of
Visiting Professor in early music at the University of the Arts in
Berlin. Previously, she served as Professor of Flute at the University
of South Dakota, and was Curator of Musical Instruments at the National
Music Museum there. She has held several multi-year fellowships from
the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Deutscher Akademischer
Austauschdienst (DAAD) to fund her creative and research pursuits
abroad.
For more about her, please visit BaroqueFlutist.com.