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 is a founding member of The City of Tomorrow, a contemporary music-focused wind quintet that took first place at the National Fischoff Chamber Music Competition in May of 2011. As a flutist with the YOA Orchestra of the Americas, she has played in Carnegie Hall in New York, a tour of mainland China, and on two Latin American tours spanning Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, and Uruguay. She traveled in 2009 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 a past member of the Chicago Civic Orchestra, and the flutist for the Civic Orchestra Wind Quintet.
Past highlights have included performing with the Jolas Quintet at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and performing Joan Tower's Flute Concerto at the Aki Festival for New Music at the Cleveland Museum of Art. 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. If you are interested in becoming a student, come on over.