Legacy of Flute

As the founding flute teacher at Curtis for over 40 years and principal flute at the Philadelphia Orchestra for nearly as long, Kincaid had an outsize impact on classical music in the United States. His pedagogical family tree is expansive. According to one study, approximately 87 percent of living American flutists trace their ancestry to Kincaid. This includes all of the flute faculty at Curtis: two of them studied with Kincaid himself, and Murray Panitz—Kincaid’s successor as Philadelphia Orchestra principal—and Jeffrey Khaner were Kincaid’s “grand-students.” David Cramer (’75), who later taught chamber music at Curtis, studied with Panitz and was thus Kincaid’s “great-grand-student.” John Krell (’42), who played piccolo in the Philadelphia Orchestra and succeeded Kincaid at Curtis, recounted Kincaid’s teaching in his published Kincaidiana (1973). Krell devoted special attention to the so-called Curtis brackets, the phrasing device developed jointly by Kincaid and Tabuteau, which helped players prioritize important notes within any given melody for expressive purposes. As another student of Kincaid, Julius Baker (’37) passed this nuanced attention to sound and phrasing to his own pupils at Curtis and incorporated it into his playing in prominent positions such as principal of the New York Philharmonic.

As students of Jeffrey Khaner, principal of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 1990, Curtis’s current five flute students now inherit the remarkable legacy left by Kincaid. When they graduate, they will join the ranks of other exceptional alumni such as Demarre McGill (’96)—brother of clarinetist Anthony McGill (’00)—who is principal flute of the Seattle Symphony and has won both an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Sphinx Medal of Excellence. Sandra Miller (’72) has established an illustrious career as a performer on the baroque transverse flute and teaches historical performance at the Juilliard School. Mimi Stillman (’99), who studied with both Julius Baker and Jeffrey Khaner and was the youngest wind player ever admitted to Curtis at the age of 12, maintains an active career as both a performer and scholar, serving as founding artistic director for the Dolce Suono Ensemble and publishing on a variety of music history topics.