Nicholas Southwick, flutist | instructor | curator
Praised by the Royal Gazette for his “beautiful phrasing” and “bright and lively playing” and by the Boston Musical Intelligencer for his "admirable ensemble cohesion," Nicholas Southwick enjoys a diverse musical career as a flutist, lecturer, and curator passionately committed to bringing over ten centuries of classical music to life in performance, writing, and spoken word.
Nicholas is core flutist of the American Prize winning Juventas New Music Ensemble, where he advocates for the performance of contemporary chamber music. This season, he gave the world premieres of newly commissioned flute works by Soyoka Hayashi and Linda Chase, and recorded solo flute repertoire by Matthew Hetz for Navona Records. Nicholas is a frequent guest artist of the Bay Chamber Concerts, where he recently performed Copland’s Appalachian Spring with soloists Stefan Jackiw, Yoonah Kim, Brad Balliett, and the Toomai String Quintet, and J.S. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2 with Palaver Strings. He has also performed Bach’s concerti with the Bermuda Chamber Orchestra, was a soloist for the Bach the European series at the Royal Academy of Music, and has performed on Emmanuel Music’s Bach cantata series in Boston. As a recitalist, he has been invited to perform at Harvard University, Salem Classical, the Trentino Festival (Italy), the University of Cambridge, and the Bloomsbury Festival, in London.
Nicholas performs with violist Long Okada in Duo Gwynne, which completed an Artist Fellowship with Music for Food. He also founded the Acadie Duo with cellist Jaime Feldman, with whom he curates an annual chamber music series in rural Maine. Nicholas has a particular interest in interdisciplinary dialogues between music and spirituality, having served as Fellow in Liturgy and Music at Harvard University’s Episcopal Chaplaincy and regularly performing for Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts (DITA).
As an orchestral player, Nicholas has played under the baton of conductors such as Sir Mark Elder, Sian Edwards, and Iain Ledingham, in venues as diverse as London’s Cadogan Hall and Harvard's Sanders Theatre to amphitheaters under the stars in the Italian Dolomites as the principal flutist of the Trentino Music Festival Orchestra. Currently based in New England, Nicholas has made frequent appearances with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, New Hampshire Festival Orchestra, Marsh Chapel Collegium, Boston Opera Collaborative, and Harvard-Radcliffe, Cambridge, and Manchester Choruses.
A devoted and passionate instructor, Nicholas is committed to empowering creativity in the classroom and encouraging robust interdisciplinary dialogues as a vehicle for encountering music within its social, cultural, and historical contexts. He is currently Assistant Professor at the Berklee College of Music and serves as Affiliated Faculty at Emerson College.
Nicholas completed his postgraduate training at the Royal Academy of Music, London under the tutelage of Karen Jones, Laura Jellicoe, and Katherine Baker. He also pursued additional training in Baroque interpretation with Lisa Beznosiuk and piccolo with Patricia Morris. He completed his previous studies at the Longy School of Music of Bard College and Gordon College. His past teachers include Marco Granados, Robert Willoughby, and Susan Heath.