Trudy Kane

2024 Lifetime Achievement Award

Trudy Kane was Principal Flute with The Metropolitan Opera from 1976 to 2008, and is Associate Professor Emeritus at the Frost School of Music, University of Miami, where she taught from 2008 to 2019. She received both her BM and MM from The Juilliard School.

Kane spent her early career as a sought-after freelance musician, acting as a regular substitute with the New York Philharmonic, recording movie music and jingles with well-known studios, and substituting and touring with The Met. Kane can be heard performing on numerous movie soundtracks including The Untouchables and the 1991 Disney animated Beauty and the Beast.

In 1976, Kane began her career at The Met, and won the principal flute audition in March of 1977, becoming the first woman in the company’s history to hold the title. Kane went on to have a successful 32-year tenure there, working with the world’s greatest conductors and singers.

As an arranger and transcriber, Kane has published a number of works for flute ensemble, flute quartet, and solo flute, including a transcription of Act 2 of Puccini's La Boheme, Intermezzo to Act 3 of Puccini's Manon Lescaut, Smetana’s Overture to the Bartered Bride. Her flute quartets include Carmen for Four, Gossec’s Tambourin, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumble Bee, and the final trio from R. Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. She’s also published cadenzas for Mozart's Flute Concerto in D Major and a transcription of Fauré’s Sonata in A Major, Op 13.

She has recorded a solo CD, In the French Style, and can be both seen and heard in many of the Met Opera on Demand performances including La Boheme, Il Trittico, Manon Lescaut, and Peter Grimes.

In 2008 Kane transitioned to academia as Associate Professor of Flute at the Frost School of Music. She cultivated a very strong studio with many former students going on to major positions and established the Frost Flute Ensemble, which performed at multiple state and national music conventions. A champion of new music, Kane commissioned several pieces for the Frost Flute Ensemble including Thomas Sleeper's Concerto for Flute and Flute Orchestra, Dorothy Hindman's Mechanisms, and Lansing McLoskey's que la tierra se partió por su sonido. Additionally, Thomas Sleeper’s Sonata for Flute and Piano and Valerie Coleman’s Matisseries for solo flute were written for Kane during this time. In 2015 the Frost School commissioned Ellen Zwillich's Concerto Elegia for her as well, which she premiered and recorded with Thomas Sleeper and the Frost Symphony Orchestra. Kane was the 2015 recipient of the Frost School of Music’s Phillip Frost Award for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship. Trudy Kane is a Yamaha Artist.

Read the Flutist Quarterly tribute to Trudy Kane at flutistquarterly.org/trudy-kane/