Nicholas Southwick, flutist
Nicholas Southwick is a flutist, instructor, and curator passionately committed to bringing over ten centuries of classical music to life in performance, writing, and spoken word.
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 is especially sought after for his interpretation of Baroque and contemporary repertoire. He is a frequent guest artist of the Bay Chamber Concerts in Rockport, Maine, where he recently performed J.S. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B Minor with Palaver Strings. He has also performed J.S. Bach’s concerti with the Bermuda Chamber Orchestra and was the principal flutist for the Bach the European series under the direction of Iain Leidingham at the Royal Academy of Music. As a recitalist, he has performed at Busch Hall at Harvard University, King’s Chapel (Boston), Salem Classical, Clare Chapel at the University of Cambridge, and the Bloomsbury Festival, London.
An advocate for flute and strings chamber music, Nicholas founded the Acadie Duo with cellist Jaime Feldman in 2018. Acadie Duo collaborates with guest musicians to present an annual summer concert series of mixed wind and string chamber music throughout Maine. He also performs with violist Long Okada in Duo Gwynne, with whom he currently holds an Artist Fellowship for Music for Food. Nicholas has a particular interest in interdisciplinary dialogues between music and theology and is currently a Fellow in Liturgy and Music at Harvard University’s Episcopal Chaplaincy. He also recently collaborated with theologians from Cambridge, Duke, and Yale Universities and musicians from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Atlanta Ballet in the Easter at King’s Festival in Cambridge, England.
Committed to the performance of contemporary chamber music, Nicholas serves as the core flutist of the Juventas New Music Ensemble, which was recently awarded the American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music. With Juventas, Nicholas has performed and recorded the works of numerous living composers including Katy Abbott, David Biedenbender, Daniel Cueto, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Allison Loggins-Hull, Josephine Morlock, Bongani Ndodana-Breen, and Yuko Uébayashi. Nicholas has also had the privilege of collaborating closely with Oliver Caplan, Linda Chase, Heather Gilligan, and Ingrid Stölzel in bringing their compositions to the stage.
As an orchestral player, Nicholas has played under the baton of conductors such as Sir Mark Elder, Sian Edwards, and Lucas Richman, in venues as diverse as Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre and London’s Cadogan Hall 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 appearances with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, New Hampshire Festival Orchestra, Boston Opera Collaborative, Harvard-Radcliffe and Manchester Choral Societies.
Nicholas is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he earned his postgraduate Professional Diploma under the tutelage of Karen Jones, Laura Jellicoe, and Katherine Baker. He pursued additional training in Baroque interpretation with Lisa Beznosiuk and piccolo with Patricia Morris. He completed his previous graduate studies at the Longy School of Music of Bard College under the tutelage of Marco Granados and Robert Willoughby. He holds a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude in Music and French from Gordon College, where he was a Presser Foundation Scholar and the first prize winner of the concerto competition.
A devoted and passionate instructor, Nicholas is committed to empowering creativity in the classroom and encouraging robust interdisciplinary dialogues as a vehicle for experiencing 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.