The NFA is happy to announce that the 2025 Mary H. Anderson Flute Choir Award has been presented to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) Flute Ensemble. 

The annual award, first presented in 2022 to honor gifted flutist Mary H. Anderson, recognizes the top-placed collegiate flute choir in the NFA’s Flute Ensemble Festival. The UNCG Flute Ensemble will receive a grant of $1,000 to go toward convention registration, use of the Mary H. Anderson contrabass flute, a dedicated 25-minute concert at the NFA Convention and the naming of the flute choir as the Mary H. Anderson Collegiate Flute Choir. 

“Current UNCG flutists and alumni will perform a program that features three premieres and three UNCG flutists' compositions,” says Erika Boysen, Associate Professor of Flute at UNCG and director of the Flute Ensemble. “We are honored to receive the Mary H. Anderson Award and look forward to gathering with the broader National Flute Association's community of flutists in August. See you all soon!”

Members of the UNCG Flute Ensemble are current undergraduate and graduate flute students at UNCG. The UNCG Flute Ensemble will perform the following program at the 53rd Annual NFA Convention in Atlanta, GA:

Sharneisha Joyner, Resist

Kyrese Washington, meditation i 

Jordan Swanger, Danse de Animaux 

Mark Engebretson, MALAISE  

A special thank you to Dan Parasky, who coordinated this year’s Flute Ensemble Festival applications. Funding for the award is provided solely through the NFA Endowment's Mary H. Anderson Fund. 

About Mary H. Anderson: The Mary H. Anderson Award was first presented in 2022 to honor Mary H. Anderson, a gifted flute player who devoted her life to sharing her flute talents through a lifetime of teaching and performing. She was an active member of the NFA and performed, by audition and invitation, at NFA conventions throughout the United States. From childhood, her daughters Susan and Ashley Anderson, attended these NFA conventions with their mother and watched her and so many others perform. As an adjunct faculty member at both Michigan's Delta College and Saginaw Valley State University (where she received the Mary H. Anderson Adjunct Faculty Award), Mary founded the Delta Flute Choir (which she also directed); Flutee, a professional Quartet in Residence at Saginaw Valley; and the ensemble now known as the Valley Wind Quintet. She performed with these and other various chamber ensembles throughout Michigan, as well as presenting clinics and master classes in flute performance. After studying flute at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, she performed with both the Louisville Orchestra and Saginaw Symphony Orchestra, where she performed for 50 years and became the Orchestra's longest playing member.