Robert Dick

Robert Dick was born and raised in New York City.  He began playing the flute as a child, having heard it (well, the piccolo actually) on the radio in the Top 40 hit Rockin’ Robin.  Robert’s main flute teachers were Henry Zlotnik, James Pappoutsakis, Julius Baker and Thomas Nyfenger.  Robert attended Yale College, where he received a B.A. degree.  Robert wrote his first compositions and had his first experiences improvising while a Yale undergraduate.  He began his first book THE OTHER FLUTE: A Performance Manual of Contemporary Techniques as an undergraduate senior project, completing the book in his first year of graduate study at the Yale School of Music where he received a Master’s degree in composition, studying composition with Robert Morris and electronic music with Bulant Arel and Jacob Druckman.  THE OTHER FLUTE was originally published by Oxford University Press in 1975.  While in graduate school, Robert composed his ground-breaking Afterlight, for flute alone, the first flute piece to use multiphonics as the primary building blocks of its musical language.  Afterlight received a BMI Oliver Daniel Prize and has become a staple in the flute repertoire.  After leaving school, Robert embarked on his career as a concert soloist devoted to contemporary repertoire.  His musical evolution lead him to devote himself to exclusively performing his original works and improvisations for many years.  At present, Robert likes to invite “guest composers” to in his recital programming, most notably Paul Hindemith, Georg-Philip Telemann and Jimi Hendrix. In addition to the books and printed scores for his etudes and pieces, Robert has provided audio instruction for his etudes and compositions.  On these CDs and DVDs, he plays the music, teaches it both interpretively and technically, and demonstrates the sound of every type of mistake and how to correct them.