Guest Artist: Linda Pereksta
Linda Pereksta joined the faculty of The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh as Assistant Professor of Flute in 2009. Prior to coming here, she taught at The University of Mississippi and Tulane University. She currently holds the position of Piccolo with the Madison Symphony Orchestra, and has previously been a member of the Arkansas, Tupelo, and Memphis Symphony Orchestras. As a tenured member of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in New Orleans, she performed in the orchestra's 2005 joint concert with the New York Philharmonic, playing under the batons of James Conlon, Leonard Slatkin and Lorin Maazel. She can be heard with the two orchestras on the Nonesuch CD, "Our New Orleans," accompanying Randy Newman.
Dr. Pereksta has been featured as a concerto soloist with Belle Meade Baroque, the Germantown Symphony Orchestra and the Tallahassee Bach Parley, and has performed with Mallarmé Chamber Players, jazz artist Nnenna Freelon, Baroque Southeast, Fiori Musicali, the Iowa Center for New Music, and numerous professional orchestras.
Dr. Pereksta holds degrees from The University of Iowa, The Peabody Conservatory of Music and Florida State University. She was a two-time recipient of Peabody Career Development Grants, and as a Doctoral Fellow at FSU, taught Baroque Flute and Recorder, directed the Baroque Ensemble and earned the Certificate in Early Music. Her doctoral treatise, "Twentieth-Century Compositions for the Baroque Flute," was a winner of the National Flute Association's 2004 call for DM/PhD Papers. Twice a major prizewinner in the NFA Baroque Flute Artist Competition, Dr. Pereksta later served as Coordinator of the competition and is presently Chair of the NFA's Historical Flutes Committee. She is Editor of TRAVERSO (a quarterly historical flute newsletter), has published articles in The Flutist Quarterly, and has performed and presented at numerous NFA conventions.
Her primary flute teachers have included Betty Bang Mather, Leone Buyse, Charles DeLaney and Robert Willoughby. She also studied baroque flute with Christopher Krueger and Colin St. Martin, recorder with Michael Lynn, and orchestral conducting and literature with the late James Dixon.