Committees

Research Committee

Our Mission

The Research Committee serves to promote the value of research, elevate the level of scholarly writing among flute professionals, encourage the creation of new scholarly work to benefit the profession, and expose new and important scholarly work to an interested audience.

Committee Members

Heidi Álvarez, Chair

Heidi Álvarez, professor of music at Western Kentucky Univ., is second flutist of the Orchestra Kentucky Bowling Green. She holds degrees from Oberlin (BM) and from Florida State Univ. (MM and DM) and studied with Debost, Chastain, and DeLaney.

James Thompson

James Thompson (he/him) is Affiliate Professor of Flute at Grand Valley State Univ., and holds the 3rd flute/piccolo position with Symphony of the Lakes. He received a Doctor of Arts from Ball State, MM from Illinois State Univ., and BM from Truman State Univ.

Valerie Watts

Valerie Watts is professor of flute at the Univ. of Oklahoma School of Music and principal flute of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra and New Hampshire Music Festival Orchestra. Her solo and chamber tours include Germany, Brazil, China, and NFA in 2001 (Dallas, TX) and 2012 (Las Vegas).

Jeiran Hasan

Jeiran Hasan (she/her) is Asst. Prof. of Flute at UT State Univ. and co-founder of the NFA YAMP Program. Primary performance interests include those of music of Azerbaijan and living female composers. She holds degrees from Univ. of IA (DMA) and the Cleveland Institute of Music. www.j-hasan.com

Nancy Toff

Nancy Toff is the author of Monarch of the Flute: The Life of Georges Barrère, The Flute Book, The Development of the Modern Flute, and Georges Barrère and the Flute in America. She is archivist and past president of the New York Flute Club. She received the NFA Distinguished Service Award in 2012.

Farah Zolghadr

Farah Zolghadr (she/her) received a DMA in flute performance from the Univ. of Miami where she studied with Trudy Kane and she was a Henry Mancini Fellow. While completing her MM and the Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas with Jennifer Grim she won the UNLV Concerto Competition, where she performed the Liebermann Piccolo Concerto. She has performed with the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, Jacksonville (IL) Symphony, Quincy Symphony Orchestra, Miami Symphony Orchestra, and Florida Grand Opera.

Kelariz Keshavarz

Kelariz Keshavarz (she/her) is Asst. Prof. of Flute at UNC - Chapel Hill, and founder of the New Waves project. Primary performance interests include those of Middle-Eastern music and those of living composers. She holds degrees from Univ. of UT (DMA) and Univ. of MO (MM). www.kelariz.com

Erin Torres

Highly regarded as an educator, clinician, soloist, new music specialist, and orchestral flutist, Dr. Erin Torres has performed and taught throughout the US, Cuba, the UK, Spain, France, Austria, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, China, and Canada. She is Principal Flutist with the Lima Symphony, Newark-Granville Symphony, and Worthington Chamber Orchestras. Dr. Torres's active research interests center on historically-informed performance and language-guided articulative practices, aided by spectral analysis.

Activities

Committee members include award-winning collegiate faculty members, authors, historians, librarians, and writers with a strong background in both music research and flute. The Committee also oversees and adjudicates the annual Graduate Research Competition.

Graduate Research Competition

In 2001, the NFA established an annual Graduate Research Competition for outstanding PhD/DMA thesis/dissertation/treatise/projects in order to promote the value of research and to expose new and important scholarly work to an interested audience.

A panel selects up to two winners for their outstanding contributions to flute study based on the quality of their writing, research, abstract, and proposal. Each winner will be invited to give a 25-minute presentation summarizing the important contributions of his/her project at the following NFA Convention. The winners’ abstracts will be published in The Flutist Quarterly and each dissertation/thesis/treatise will be deposited in the NFA Music Library at the University of Arizona after review.

For more information, go to:
The Graduate Research Competition page

Resources

Writing Program Notes