Biography
Hailed for her "superb command of color and nuance" by Cleveland's Plain Dealer, Elise Blatchford is a flutist involved in many projects. She has toured Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay with the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, a group committed to international co-operation and understanding through orchestral music. In October of 2009, she traveled to the Dominican Republic with the group Traveling Notes in a project supported by the U.S. Embassy and the Dominican Ministry of Culture to mentor chamber musicians in Santo Domingo. She is currently an associate member of the Chicago Civic Orchestra, and the flutist for the Civic Orchestra Wind Quintet.
Past highlights have included performing with the contemporary-music-focused Jolas Quintet at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Elise was a semi-finalist in the 2008 Frank Bowen Flute Competition in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2003, Elise performed Joan Tower's Flute Concerto at the Aki Festival for New Music in Cleveland. In 2007, Ensemble Parallele featured Elise in Lou Harrison's opera Young Caesar at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Aside from new music ventures, Elise has performed with the National Orchestral Institute and freelanced with orchestras in the Chicago area, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon.
Elise has received degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Her teachers have included Tim Day, Michel Debost, and Kathleen Chastain.
Also a dedicated teacher, Elise teaches flute privately at her home and through Evanston Winds and Brass. If you are interested in becoming a student, come on over.