This summer, students in the Frost School’s flute program, led by their professor Jennifer Grim, gathered at the National Flute Association’s (NFA) annual convention in San Antonio, Texas, in early August to celebrate generations of flute players at the Frost School and the two professors who have shaped them.
The NFA honored Grim’s predecessor, former flute associate professor Trudy Kane, with their Lifetime Achievement Award. Thirteen of Grim’s students, her entire studio, and 20 of Kane’s former students gathered to salute her.
“It was really wonderful to celebrate the legacy of Trudy Kane,” said Grim, who took over the flute department’s leadership when Kane retired in 2019. “It was a special moment to bring the current Frost students to the convention to meet Trudy’s former students and make this connection between her studio and my studio.”
“One thing I noticed throughout the experience was the bond between the Frost students from her era and my era. A strong sense of community, camaraderie, and respect was displayed when we were together.”
At the NFA convention, current Frost School students performed Kane’s transcriptions of Benjamin Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes” and Steve Reich’s “Vermont Counterpoint,” accompanied by Grim.
Kane had a groundbreaking career as a woman in music and an educator. From 1976 to 2008, she was the principal flutist for the renowned Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the first woman to hold that position. She was a pioneer who overcame sexism and skepticism to become a renowned performer. She left in 2008 to become Associate Professor of Flute at the Frost School, remaining for 11 years. Her last doctoral student, Emily Dierickx, wrote her doctoral essay on Kane’s life and career and created another version for the NFA.
“She has meant so much to me, her students, the school, the University, and the music world,” Dierickx told Frost News in 2020. “She showed other women what was possible.”
As a young professional in New York, Grim knew of Kane’s reputation at the Met Orchestra. In Grim’s first teaching job,at the University of Nevada Las Vegas College of Fine Arts, her first graduate student became Kane’s first doctoral student at the Frost School.
“Her tenure at Frost was very significant,” said Grim, who says Kane arranged and commissioned many works for the Frost Flute Ensemble.
Grim is continuing Kane’s legacy of excellence and creativity. She is currently vice president of the NFA, which has over 3000 members and is the largest single-instrument organization in the world and will become president on November 1st. She has been acclaimed as a solo and chamber musician, performing with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, and is the flutist for Zéphyros Winds and the principal flute of the Mozart Orchestra of New York. She has taught at numerous universities and conservatories, including the Juilliard School, Yale University, and the Eastman School of Music.
“My focus as a teacher is to bring out musicians’ best humanistic qualities and prepare them to be artists,” said Grim. “That can be by playing flute at the highest level, or talking about music or teaching music.”
Grim fell in love with the flute in second grade in Berkley, California, when she heard a 6th grader play the instrument. “I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard,” Grim said. “I went home and said, ‘I want to learn to play the flute’.”
