The National Flute Association is proud to announce the recipients of the 2024 Achievement Awards. Trudy Kane and David Straubinger will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, and Leonard Garrison will receive the Distinguished Service Award.
The Lifetime Achievement Award honors the best and brightest of the field by recognizing their lasting contributions to the flute community. The Distinguished Service Award is presented to an individual who has demonstrated profound, dedicated service and commitment to the National Flute Association.
Each award recipient will be profiled in an upcoming issue of The Flutist Quarterly, and awards will be presented at the 2024 NFA Convention in San Antonio, TX.
Trudy Kane was Principal Flute with the Metropolitan Opera 1976-2008 and is Emeritus Associate Professor at the Frost School of Music. She received both her BM and MM from the Juilliard School. She is active in the commercial recording field and can be heard on the soundtracks of many film scores including The Untouchables and Beauty and the Beast (original). She can be heard and seen on many Met videos including Il Trittico, Manon Lescaut, Peter Grimes and three different La Bohemes. Her solo CD Inthe French Style includes Sonatas by Franck, Fauré and the Gieseking Sonatine.
Kane has been active in commissioning new works from composers including Ellen Zwillich, Thomas Sleeper, Dorothy Hindman, Lansing McLoskey, and Valerie Coleman. She continues to give masterclasses around the country.
David Straubinger received his musical training at Julliard School of Music and Jordan School of Music. He played for six years with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. In 1969, he started a business rebuilding and repairing woodwind instruments for professional musicians and their students. The problems encountered in rebuilding and repairing flutes led him to develop a new concept in pad design. After four years of extensive research, David was awarded a patent on that concept and design. This pad design and the precision repair techniques developed with it would ultimately revolutionize the flute industry worldwide. The Straubinger Pad has become an icon that has raised the bar of expectations and possibilities for all flutists and wind players. This search for excellence led ultimately to the development of the Straubinger Flute.
Leonard Garrison is University Distinguished Professor of flute and Associate Director in the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho and recipient of the University’s inaugural Presidential Mid-Career Award and an Idaho Commission on the Arts Fellowship. He is flutist in the Northwest Wind Quintet at the University of Idaho and the Scott/Garrison Duo, principal flute of the Walla Walla Symphony, and past president and program chair of the National Flute Association. In summers, he teaches and performs at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan. An active member of the National Flute Association, he has held every officer position within the organization and was Program Chair for the 2017 Convention.
For more information on the Achievement Awards, including a list of past winners, visit nfaonline.org/about/achievement-awards