Carla Rees
flutes
British flute player Carla Rees (b. 1976) (low flutes, Kingma system and baroque flutes) is a performer, arranger and composer with an international reputation for innovative work. Her career focuses on collaboration between composer, performer and flute maker in order to extend the repertoire. Carla studied flute and composition at the Royal College of Music, London. Her teachers included Graham Mayger, Simon Channing, Timothy Salter and Edwin Roxburgh. She completed her PhD in 2014, focussing on the use of extended techniques for Kingma System alto and bass flutes.
In 2003 she formed (and is artistic director of) rarescale, an ensemble dedicated to the creation and promotion of new repertoire for her instruments. She is an active chamber musician, performing with the Goldfield Ensemble, Edison Ensemble, Duo NewFLow and in duo with piccolo player Milica Milojevic Bogdanovic. Other collaborations include improvised interdisciplinary work with artist Caroline Wright, an exploration of telematic performance systems with composer Scott L Miller, and performances and recordings of the flute chamber works of Feldman with pianist John Tilbury and percussionist Simon Allen.
Several hundred new works have been written for Carla, by composers including Claes Biehl, Stephen Davismoon, Simon Emmerson, Sungji Hong, Robert Fokkens, Ben Gaunt, Daniel Kessner, Nicola LeFanu, Florence Anna Maunders, Adam Melvin, Patrick Nunn, Michael Oliva, David Bennett Thomas, Sohrab Uduman, Ian Wilson, Scott Wilson and Elizabeth Winters. She also performs historical and new repertoire on baroque flutes. She has over 80 published compositions and arrangements (Tetractys Publishing).
[photo by Nick Romero]
As a recording artist, she has appeared on over 30 CDs for NMC, Métier, Delphian, Divine Art, Atopos, Capstone, Red Sock, Heritage, Edition Troy and rarescale records among others. She appears frequently at international festivals including at the American National Flute Association Convention (2015, 2017, 2018), Canadian Flute Convention (2015), French Flute Convention (2016), Kulturforum Pax Christi, Krefeld, Germany (2016), Open Spaces Festival Nuremburg, Germany (2016), Tirol Easter Festival, Austria (2016), Eglise Saint-Merri, Paris (2016), La Cote Festival, Switzerland (2016), German Flute Festival (2017), Japan Flute Association Festival (2017, 2019), International Low Flutes Festival (2018), Lunalia Festival, Belgium (2018), European Flute Council Festival, Poland (2019), Adams Flute Festival (2019), Costa Rica Flute Festival (2019), ABRAF Festival, Brazil (2019), eFlute Festival (2022) and the Southern Flute Festival (2022).
Carla is an enthusiastic and dedicated teacher. In 2015, she designed a fully online practical BA(Hons) Music degree for the Open College of the Arts, where she continues to lead the music department. She is Professor of Low Flutes and Contemporary Flute at the Royal Academy of Music, flute teacher at Royal Holloway, University of London, and a faculty member for the FluteXpansions Sonic Immersion summer program.
