Dr. Phoebe Robertson

Phoebe Robertson is Assistant Professor of Flute at Arkansas Tech University. Her solo and orchestral performances have brought her to such venues as Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie as well as halls from coast to coast in North America. She has performed as soloist with ensembles including the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic, and Symphony New Brunswick. Orchestral performances in which Dr. Robertson was a featured soloist have been broadcast on BBC3 and CBC Radio, and she has performed alongside members of the New York Philharmonic and of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Equally at home performing contemporary music as the standard repertoire, she has premiered numerous works for solo flute and flute with electronics, including a full recital of premieres by members of the Tesselat Composers Collective.

 

Her scholarship has likewise brought her around the world, including a recent paper at the biennial “Music Since 1900” Conference in Birmingham, England. Dr. Robertson discovered an affinity for the music of Soviet composers early on in her studies, and has carried that through to her doctoral dissertation on the philosophical concept of opposition in flute works by Russian-Tatar composer Sofia Gubaidulina, advised by Dr. Edward Green. Her work on Gubaidulina gave her a renewed passion for the study of gender in music; she has delivered papers at numerous conferences dedicated to women musicians such as the Royal Musical Association Study Day on Women and Gender in the Eastern Bloc. In 2020, she was published in the Eidolon Journal of Classics with her interdisciplinary article “Piping Hot: On Folklore, Fluting, and Feminism” on gender dynamics in early twentieth-century French flute music based on mythology. She continues to develop several forthcoming publications set to appear in 2023. In addition, she serves as Reviews Editor of the CAML Review, the official publication of the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres.

 

Dr. Robertson has taught flute at the Manhattan School of Music, Mount Allison University, and the Gould Academy, and has given masterclasses at universities, conservatories, festivals, and arts programs throughout North America. With recent technological innovations in online lessons, she enjoys teaching and mentoring flutists from around the world. She is particularly passionate about the remarkable leaps forward that undergraduate flutists can take during their studies, and she revels in the chance to be a part of that process at Arkansas Tech University. She is just as enthusiastic about the progress and discoveries students make in the classroom, having lectured in Music History at the Manhattan School of Music and Carnegie Mellon on a range of topics from the music of Black American women to the music of Siberian shamans. This dedication to sharing the joy and richness of music has made her a sought-after writer of program notes for orchestras throughout the Northeastern United States, helping to make concerts more accessible to audiences with a wide variety of musical backgrounds.

 

Raised in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada, she earned a Doctorate of Musical Arts at the Manhattan School of Music in New York, studying with Linda Chesis and Robert Langevin. For her excellence in doctoral work, she was selected for the Helen Cohn Award. She holds a Master of Music degree from Carnegie Mellon University, where she studied with Lorna McGhee, and a Bachelor of Music degree from her studies with Camille Churchfield at the University of Ottawa. She has also enriched her studies at the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Netherlands Flute Academy, the Orchestra of the Americas, the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, the Orford Music Academy, and the Domaine Forget Music Academy. Her studies have been generously supported by such organizations as the O’Brien Foundation and the Sylva Gelber Music Foundation. Outside of music, she also enjoys sewing clothing, studying theology, and road cycling.