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BIO
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Caen Thomason-Redus is the Assistant Professor of Flute at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and enjoys traveling the country performing and presenting master classes. At UWM, Caen is particularly active in the performance and coaching of chamber music through the faculty artist series Chamber Music Milwaukee, the Leonard Sorkin International Institute of Chamber Music, and his own series of flute recitals. Other recent performances include solos with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and UWM’s major ensembles, African American repertoire recitals at the National Flute Association Convention and Madison Flute Festival, and numerous guest appearances around the country. Baroque music is always a major part of Caen’s performing as represented by recent collaborations with Milwaukee’s own Bach Babes, Milwaukee Symphony Concertmaster Frank Almond’s Frankly Music series, and UWM’s Bach and Before concerts. |
Prior to arriving in Milwaukee, Caen spent two years performing with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as their Minority Fellow and now performs often with professional orchestras including the St. Louis, Milwaukee and Kansas City symphonies. Caen began playing Muramatsu flutes in 2003 and is a Muramatsu Artist. You can hear Caen on The Flute Collection, three new recordings and annotated anthologies of graded flute solos published this year by Schirmer. Active musically from an early age, Caen began playing the flute in public school, studied privately at the San Francisco Conservatory, sang in San Francisco Opera productions with the San Francisco Boys Chorus, and studied saxophone with former Duke Ellington band member Ben Miller. His activities later expanded to include performance on Baroque and Renaissance flutes and the research and performance of African-American classical music. Caen has worked with many contemporary composers including Philip Glass, Gunther Schuller, Chinary Ung, Mario Davidofsky, Barbara Kolb, David Maslanka and Robert Beaser, and always makes it a point to perform and premiere the works of younger composers. Caen received performance degrees from Rice University (MM) and the University of Redlands (BM), and did additional studies at the University of Michigan and the Mozarteum Akademie in Salzburg, Austria. His primary instructors were Leone Buyse, Candice Palmberg and Yaada Weber. Through his participation in festivals and master classes such as Aspen, Spoleto USA, Sion Academy ( Switzerland), Domaine Forget ( Canada) and the San Francisco Early Music Society Baroque Workshop, Caen also worked with Mark Sparks, Martha Aarons, Trevor Wye and Doriot Anthony Dwyer. As the Detroit Symphony fellow, Caen studied with Jeff Zook and the other members of the DSO flute section. Caen ’s previous teaching activities include faculty positions at Wayne State University and the Sphinx Preparatory Academy, both located in downtown Detroit. Caen and his wife, hornist Kristi Crago, served as principals in the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra and as faculty at the University of Evansville in Indiana. Dedicated to education and musical outreach, Caen and Kristi spend much of their personal time creating and taking part in programs that bring music closer to people of all backgrounds and ages.
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