Hailed "Queen of the flute" by New York Magazine, flutist Carol Wincenc was first prize winner of the (sole) Naumburg Solo Flute Competition, as well as the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Flute Association, the National Society of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Music, and Distinguished Alumni Award from the Brevard Festival and Music Center and Manhattan School of Music. During the 2019-22 seasons she is celebrating a half century as an international, concertizing artist at The Morgan Library and Museum, Merkin Concert Hall and the Staller Center for the Arts.
For her 50th Golden Anniversary Legacy Series she commissioned five new works by Jake Heggie, Pierre Jalbert, Robert Sirota, Larry Alan Smith and Sato Matsui. As part of this grand celebration is the release of the all-Yuko Uebayashi album on Azica Records with the Escher String Quartet. Recently as part of the Naumburg Looks Back Series she performed at Carnegie's Weill Hall with her collaborator/pianist Bryan Wagorn of the Metropolitan Opera.
During this season she also did the world premieres of Gabriela Lena Frank's Five Andean Improvisations and Valerie Coleman's Amazonia. She has appeared as soloist with such ensembles as the Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and London symphonies, the BBC, Warsaw, and Buffalo Philharmonics, as well as the Los Angeles, Stuttgart, and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestras. She has performed in countless festivals such as Mostly Mozart, Aldeburgh, Budapest, Frankfurt, Santa Fe, Spoleto, Music at Menlo, Aspen, Yale/Norfolk, Sarasota, Banff, and Marlboro.
A Grammy nominee, she has received a Diapason d'Or Award for her recording of the Rouse Flute Concerto withthe Houston Symphony, a Recording of Special Merit Award with pianist András Schiff, and Gramophone magazine's "Pick of the Month" with the Buffalo Philharmonic. She is a member of the New York Woodwind Quintet and a founding member of both Les Amies with New York Philharmonic Principals, harpist Nancy Allen and violist Cynthia Phelps and the Gossamer Trio with Nancy Allen and Claire Marie Solomon, cellist.
For over a half century combined, Ms. Wincenc continues to teach on the faculties of The Juilliard School and Stony Brook University. She is renowned for her popular series with Lauren Keiser Music Publishers, the Carol Wincenc 21st Century Flute.