Beverly Crawford

Beverly Crawford is currently Third Flute and Piccolo for the Eastern Connecticut Symphony, Principal Flute for the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Principal Flute for Wolf Trap Opera, and a freelancer in the Northeast. She served as Guest Assistant Principal Flute for the Baltimore Symphony from 2008 to 2014 as well as Second Flute in Pittsburgh Opera from 2002 to 2018 and Principal Flute for Green Mountain Opera Festival in 2014. She previously held principal and second flute positions in orchestras, opera, and ballet companies in Akron, Columbus (OH), Toledo, Syracuse, and Knoxville. She has also performed with the Hartford Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Harrisburg Symphony, Washington National Opera, National Symphony, Albany Symphony, Hartford Symphony, and the New York Philharmonic. She has worked with Andre Previn, David Robertson, Mariss Jansons, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Marin Alsop, Maxim Shostakovich, Mstislav Rostropovich, Juanho Mena, Christoph Eschenbach, Vasily Petrenko, Leonard Slatkin, Jaap van Zweden, Susanna Mälkki, and Michael Tilson Thomas. In 2004 she was honored to perform at the Vatican for Pope John Paul II.

Crawford received her Bachelor’s in Music from Northwestern University and her Master’s in

Music History from Florida State University, where she studied ethnomusicology and taught traditional and baroque flute. She also studied at the Académie Internationale d’été de Nice, France, and at the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. She has two sons, one teaching mathematics in Texas and one studying electronic music composition at the Hartt School.

Favorite musical memory: Sitting with my dad while he played his favorite recordings and told me the stories of Symphonie Fantastique or Firebird.

Favorite Composer: Instead of favorite composers, I have favorite pieces…Knoxville: Summer of 1915 by Samuel Barber; “Ain’t it a pretty night” from Susannah by Carlisle Floyd; The Marriage of Figaro by W.A. Mozart; the Priests’ Chorus from The Magic Flute by W.A. Mozart; the Te Deum scene from Tosca by Giacomo Puccini; Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi; Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss; the ballets Cinderella and Romeo and Juliet by Sergei Prokofiev; the Rückert-Lieder by Gustav Mahler; Symphonies 1-5 by Gustav Mahler; Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland.

What/Who inspired you to take up your instrument: I was trying to decide between the tuba and the horn when my aunt gave us her old flute. My dad fixed it up for me (because he could do anything) and that was it!