Award winning flutist Barbara Hopkins enjoys national recognition for her performances. She has released several CDs, including the brand new Andersen Etudes, opus 15 as well as Telemann Methodical Sonatas, Vol. 1 and Short Concert Pieces for Flute and Piano. The Flute Network praised her Telemann recording as, “full, rich, and highly musical.” The best selling Short Concert Pieces disc is in its second printing. She has appeared as soloist in New York, Boston, Albuquerque, Seattle, Phoenix, Atlanta, Dallas, Alaska, Florida, Connecticut, and throughout her home state of Pennsylvania. Composer Edward Diemente has written several works for her, and she has also worked with Joan Tower and Shirish Korde.

Barbara has been a top prize winner in the New York Flute Club Young Artist Competition, was first prize winner in the National Flute Association Orchestral Audition Competition, and was awarded a fellowship to Tanglewood Music Center, where she had the honor of playing principal flute under Leonard Bernstein. She has been a member of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra since 1993, and has also performed with the Minnesota Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, and Florida West Coast Symphony.

A cousin of early Connecticut flute maker Asa Hopkins and a great niece of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Barbara is greatly interested in early American instruments and music. She has acquired two flutes by Asa Hopkins, and has had them restored to playing condition. She has founded the Rosewood Chamber Ensemble with guitarist Judy Handler and is playing concerts of nineteenth century American songs and dances. The Greater Boston Flute Association Gazette wrote of their Boston concert, “The pieces were played with style and joy, resulting in a captivating performance.”

Barbara teaches flute at the University of Connecticut and also taught community division students at The Hartt School. It was while teaching at The Hartt School that she conceived the idea for her first CD, Short Concert Pieces for Flute and Piano, when she realized her students needed to hear the repertoire that she was teaching and that much of it had never been recorded.

Dr. Hopkins has written a number of pedagogical articles. These can be found in the pages of Flute Talk, Greater Boston Flute Association’s Gazette, Seattle Flute Society’s Newsletter, and The Flute Rag.

Dr. Hopkins received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she studied with Samuel Baron. She earned her Master of Music from The Mannes College of Music under Thomas Nyfenger, and her Bachelor of Music at The Hartt School with John Wion.

Barbara Hopkins is an Artist/Clinician for Avanti flutes, a division of Conn-Selmer, Inc.

Boxwood flute by Asa Hopkins
photo: Jerry Schurr