Craig Goodman, Flute / composer
Flutist Craig Goodman appeared with Brightmusic in “Vox Flûte,” an OAC-funded concert, on March 24, 2009. Craig returns to Oklahoma City for his second Brightmusic appearance, this time not only as a guest artist, but also as a composer.
Craig was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and was educated in Vienna, Paris and New York. He studied flute and chamber music at the Yale University School of Music, receiving his B.A. in 1978. The following year, after completing analysis and composition studies, he received his M.M. degree from Yale. He began his performance career as a solo flutist with the Philadelphia Opera Orchestra under Julius Rudel.
Craig received a Roussel prize for postgraduate studies in analysis and composition at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris. He has participated in masterclasses with Jean-Pierre Rampal, Aurele Nicolet, Alain Marion, James Galway, Leonard Bernstein and Sergiu Celibidache.
Craig’s awards and distinctions include the Bates Fellowship and Marshall Allison award at Yale University; the Carl-Nielsen Foundation Award, Copenhagen; the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation Award; the Excellence Prize of The Julliard School, the Paderewski Prize and the Concert Artists Guild Carnegie Hall Prize, all in New York City; a prize from UNESCO in Paris; and a touring award from the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States. He is listed in Who’s Who in International Music, London.
Craig has given concert tours and performances as a flute soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe, the United States, Russia and Japan. He has given featured performances with orchestras under the direction of Zubin Mehta, Julius Rudel, Raymond Leppard and Szymon Goldberg, as well as television and radio performances for Radio France, FR2 in Paris; Radio Denmark; WNYC in New York; and NHK in Japan. He has performed as a flutist with the New York City Ballet Orchestra, the American Composers’ Orchestra, Musica Aeterna and the Philadelphia Opera Orchestra. And his career has taken him to performance venues including The Vienna Konzerthaus, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center.
Craig currently serves as Professor of Chamber Music and Coordinator of the Chamber Music Department at the National Conservatory in Strasbourg, France. Former academic positions include Assistant Professor (Médiation Culturelle) at Université Paris III; Assistant Professor of Flute and Chamber Music at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Denmark; and a resident artist with The Rutgers University New Music Ensemble.
Craig is the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Thy Chamber Music Festival in Denmark, where musicians from around the world come together to live and work intensively each year to perform known and lesser-known masterpieces of the repertoire. He is also the Artistic Director of Rencontres Musicales de Genève in Switzerland. He has been a guest lecturer at the Sorbonne in Paris, and has given masterclasses at the Moscow Conservatory and the Gnessin Institut in Moscow; the Schola Cantorum of Paris; the Chopin Academy in Warsaw; the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen; the Royal Conservatory of Music in Denmark; and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
He has recorded eight CDs and LP records for Adelcord (Austria), Suoni e Calore (France) and MusicMasters (United States).
Since 1986, Craig has composed 15 works for instrumental and vocal ensembles. His compositions are decidedly lyrical, always written with particular people and places in mind. Commissioned works include assignments from Les Amis de l’Ecole Americaine in Fontainebleau, France; the Rencontres Musicales de Geneve, Switzerland; Nozal, SA, Paris for the Chicago, National Flute Association Convention; l’Association des concerts à Jarzé, France; the JP Jacobsen Foundation in Thisted, Denmark; the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra in Poznan, Poland; the Danish National Park Opening Celebration Committee (with Danish poet and novelist Knud Sørensen); and the City of Lodz, Poland.
His compositions have been performed by Le Quatuor Elysée (Paris); members of L’Ensemble Orchestral de Paris; the Riga (Latvia) Chamber Orchestra; the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra of Poland; and faculty and students at Conservatoire National de Strasbourg.
Craig makes his home in Strasbourg, France. For more information, please visit www.flutist.com.
