With one ear to the future

By WILLIAM DART

For 11 years, Alexa Still was an elegant presence in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. She'd been appointed to the post of principal flute at 23 but, from her first few rehearsals, realised she needed to keep her options open.

"I could tell that people around me had hearing problems, which is something that happens when you work in an orchestra. This is me in a few years, I thought, and what am I going to do about it?"

The solution was to keep herself busy and not forget her solo playing and, when the noted producer Michael Fine was in the country recording an NZSO CD, he asked her to do a solo CD.

"I was completely shell-shocked and it took me about a second to say yes," jokes Still.

Of all her 13 CDs, she is most proud of a disc of New Zealand music. "It was hard to talk Michael into it, but the CD got reviewed extensively in the United States. American flautists play Anthony Ritchie's concerto now and I think if I hadn't included it on that CD, they wouldn't have."

Still is refreshingly down-to-earth when discussing what it takes to be a musician, and physical fitness is vital.

"I know I play much better if I'm reasonably fit. There's a terrific English teacher, Peter Lloyd, who requires his pupils join a club and go swimming. I pretty much browbeat my students into doing something physical.

"Musicians are prone to being Type A personalities who think that if you're not practising, you're not achieving anything. We flute players use so much air that if you're not aerobically fit your playing is compromised."

Still has been teaching at the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado for six years now and appreciates "the chance to be involved with someone at a time of their life when they are making important decisions about who they want to be and how they want to live their lives".

She laments the fact that the instrument attracts mainly female players: "It's still seen as cute, doing bird twiddles and light sort of stuff as opposed to a trombone or a saxophone."

Ironically, the world's leading concert flautists - such as William Bennett, Robert Aitken and James Galway - tend to be male.

Still's an unashamed Galway fan. "I feel he has been overly downgraded by other flute players. He has been single-handedly responsible for commissioning many marvellous pieces and has done a lot to promote the instrument."

This Sunday Alexa Still will join the Auckland Chamber Orchestra for Lukas Foss' 1986 Renaissance Concerto, which reworks music by Rameau and Monteverdi in a contemporary idiom that manages to be highly approachable.

"The slow movement is so cool," explains Still, "and Foss has written it so it's somewhat spatial, so I'm hoping we can adjust the placement of the orchestra in the concert chamber to get the echo effects."

In real life, this woman is far from a delicate Renaissance maiden. I'm talking to a devoted motorcyclist. She almost bought a Harley "until it started shaking so hard I thought it was going to self-destruct". A Ducati was the final choice when she fell in love with the sound - "that low throaty growl".

"There's something about being on a bike that makes you feel part of what's going on around you in a much more intense way than in a car. I meet people who are not part of my usual set, and doing things where I meet people who aren't necessarily musicians is a good way of keeping in touch with the world."

Performance

* What: Auckland Chamber Orchestra, with Alexa Still

* Where and when: Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber, Sunday 6pm