Elizabeth Rowe

BSO principal flutist Elizabeth Rowe joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2004 and holds the Walter Piston Principal Flute Chair. Prior to joining the BSO, she held titled positions with the orchestras of Fort Wayne, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. Regularly featured in front of the orchestra, Ms. Rowe has been soloist with the BSO in Ligeti’s Double Concerto for flute and oboe with conductor Christoph von Dohnányi and BSO principal oboe John Ferrillo (a collaboration to be repeated in the closing concerts of the BSO’s 2019-20 subscription season); the American premiere of Elliott Carter’s Flute Concerto; Mozart’s G major flute concerto, K.313 (with which she made her first BSO appearance as a concerto soloist); Mozart’s C major concerto for flute and harp with BSO principal harpist Jessica Zhou (including a performance on tour with the orchestra in Tokyo); Gabriela Lena Frank’s Illapa, Tone Poem for Flute and Orchestra; Frank Martin’s Concerto for Seven Wind Instruments, Timpani, Percussion, and Strings; Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 2 and 5; and Leonard Bernstein’s Ḥalil (in the BSO’s Opening Night all-Bernstein program under Andris Nelsons in September 2017 and at Tanglewood in July 2018 under Herbert Blomstedt). Noted for her insightful teaching, Ms. Rowe attracts flute students from around the country to her lessons and master classes. She works regularly with students at the New England Conservatory and the Tanglewood Music Center and is a frequent guest artist at the New World Symphony. She previously taught at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and University of Maryland. As a member of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, she can be heard in a wide variety of chamber works throughout the season at NEC’s Jordan Hall and in several recordings. Elizabeth Rowe grew up in Eugene, Oregon. She received her bachelor of music degree from the University of Southern California, where she was a Trustee Scholar and a student of Jim Walker, former principal flute of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Ms. Rowe’s connection to the Boston Symphony Orchestra dates back to the summer of 1996, when she was a Tanglewood Music Center Fellow and performed as principal flute under Seiji Ozawa’s direction in the TMC production of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes that marked the fiftieth anniversary of the opera’s 1946 American premiere at Tanglewood.