I gave a short introduction to the flute to a class of year sevens this morning, to encourage students to sign up for flute lessons. In the past, addressing a whole class would have made me a little nervous – I normally teach one-to-one or small groups – but today I was confident and excited. The reason being that I am on a mission!
I love the fact that I can stand in front of a class of 11/12 year olds and say “Hello, my name is Ruth and I make my living by playing the flute.” No careers advisor is going to tell them that you can do that! Mine certainly didn’t when I was in year nine. Despite the fact that I lived and breathed music, and I was well on my way to grade 8 flute and piano in my mid-teens, my careers advice was to become a Nature Park Ranger.
I love the fact that I have such a wide circle of creative friends and collegues from whom I have learnt, and continue to learn, so much about playing, teaching, sharing and creating. This makes me a conduit of musical and creative possibilities! I love giving people of all ages the chance to reimagine themselves.
I stood in front of the class and played various examples of different flute styles – without sheet music (first time I have done this) – and being able to look at them as they all sat there engaged, curious, surprised – was fab. To guide them all through breathing exercises and help them make funny flute playing faces was a gift!
The desire to connect with people, takes away my fear of fear. To be vulnerable and together, not vulnerable and alone.
As a musician, I am so grateful for the ways - educating, performing, composing, listening -  I can connect with people. 

I know a fair amount of musicians who have had tough times recently - chronic illnesses which prevent them from playing, financial difficulties, ailing parents, life-threatening illness - myself included. I also know a fair amount of non-musicians too who have these things to contend with. In fact, I often see the 'MUSICIAN' living out their life through their relationship with their instrument, technique, expression and creativity as a metaphor for the 'every person'. A person who doesn't play an instrument is equally living out their life through their relationship with their instrument (what they do), their technique (how they do it), expression (of what they do) and their creativity (how they make their expression of what they do unique to them). 
Agh, goodness, this is why I haven't written a blog for a while... let's get to the point...
The point is, I have been struggling. This time last year I was 'pouring my heart out in gratitude' for everything and getting up early to practice everyday and paying to hire a practice space and aiming high high high. And this year, struggling with finances and with a mum really suffering very much now with Alzheimer's... I feel that, rather than pouring my heart out, I am having to hold my heart in. Be gentle with my heart, preserve my heart, make sure that there is enough to go round. Not just my heart, but my head. 
At the beginning of the year I was preparing audition pieces, entering competitions, constantly looking out for funding opportunities and further studying opportunities. And now, I have stopped.
I am asking the question WHY am I striving? WHY do I need to maintain my technique? WHY do I need to play the flute? I can't really continue until I know. I KNOW that I do need to. There isn't any question over the fact that I will continue. But I can't really continue in earnest until, until something.
I am casting aside habits and assumptions. I am casting aside aches and pains and things that squeeze my heart too much (there is enough of that in life anyway), and I will find my way. I am doing afew other things, walking, bouncing around with Davina McCall discovering muscles I never knew I had, throwing out stuff, looking after some other stuff. I really really really want to do it all, but it really really really isn't possible. A 'whole musician' will never fit a mould. 'Doing it all' is based on assumptions of what 'it all' is. I will be a whole musician. A whole person. I just feel very mutable but possible right now.

I haven't got a new flute! I have had my gorgeous Altus for 2 years now and still love it. These thoughts have been prompted by accompanying a good friend of mine on a flute upgrade mission. Here are my musings...

When I first try out a new flute I can usually quickly tell whether I gel with the basic sound quality of the flute. If it is a sound that I like, I will find what I call the 'sweet spot', the particular tone colour that I find easiest to produce on that flute - and I will revel in using that particular tone colour. I get carried away with the 'newness' of the instrument and simply expect it to do 'hard things' easily - crisp tonguing, low notes, high notes quietly - and because I expect it to, it fairly often does.
I come back to it later and play it again. I enjoy the 'sweet spot' of the sound, but don't revel in it quite so much this time because it isn't new to me. I start to notice other elements in the sound of the instrument and try to bring out these different sounds - can I push for more lower harmonics in the sound to get a 'darker' sound? can I make the sound really gentle and clear but without an 'edginess'? I get more picky, and of course, the flute - and MY technique - doesn't always satisfy my expectations. I lose abit of my 'revelry' and then the basic things eg. articulation, even sound throughout the registers - start to seem more of a labour again.
For me, this happens on ALL flutes. Just like it can happen in all human relationships!
I feel very happy with my Altus as I know that it contains all the possibilities in colour and expression that I want it to. It is my responsibility to keep my technique secure and (for me, this is my latest key revelation) - to keep my REVELRY - and then all is possible.

“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.” 
― Howard Thurman


I have recently discovered the writings of Howard Thurman  - so many wonderful thoughts that really reverberate with my own feelings - so affirmative to read.
We are beating up our world through our addiction to consume. To buy pointless things and throw them away. To earn lots of money and then have to earn more...and more... and more.... what? More what? 
I am so lucky to be able to follow my heart - to make music with my flute and to touch on beautiful moments frequently - with fellow musicians, with my students, with audiences, with my friends, my family, with myself, and with simply the company of the energy of the room.

Many circumstances can make it harder to follow your heart - ill health, financial need, social inequality, discrimination, conflict - I pour love out of my heart in gratefulness for my situation in which I am able to hear my heart. 

I have been growing a flute course! I am currently in the process of creating advertising materials and a full throttled publicity assault will be launched shortly, but I couldn't wait to to share it! Let me know if you are interested, or if you know of anyone who might be interested. More details will be on here in the next week or so.

FLUTE BOOST - with Ruth Molins

Boost your flute inspiration levels in 5 days!

A course for flute players of any age who are grade 6 + standard, who want new ideas
to refresh their practice
and invigorate their playing.

Participants choose from 3 course formats
1. ALL sessions; 2. Mornings and Saturday or 3. Afternoons and Saturday

Morning sessions, 7.45am – 8.30am
A routine of exercises focussing around breathing and tone control.

Afternoon sessions, 3.45pm – 5pm
Group warm-ups using scales and simple melodies.
Rehearsal of 2 flute ensemble pieces.

Saturday session, 2pm – 4.30pm
Rehearsal and an informal concert for friends and family.

An additional 45 minute, individual lesson can be booked at 5pm.
Tuesday 29th July – Sat 2nd August, at the Newtown Community Association hut in Belmont Park, Exeter

I haven't blogged for a while... Not through a lack of potential material! (Photos show afew recent gigs- with 1. Earworms at Exeter Northcott Theatre, 2. with Flute Cake and Rebecca Willson and Bel Canto and David Cottam! Mammoth line up! 3. rehearsing with ESO in Exeter Cathedral) It is difficult to decide how honest to be on a blog like this: should this blog present a professional, polished image of myself or a realistic portrait of who I am? When I became a mother at 24, I frequently trawled the Internet searching for blogs/accounts if what it is like to be a professional musician or a practising artist and to also be a mother and a wife. I couldn't find what I was looking for. I don't really know what I was looking for... Anyway... I'm going to blog in an honest manner else I'll end up not blogging at all. March has been very busy for me: I've done alot of gigs, a record number of my students have taken music exams this term, I've been practising like mad and I've been writing applications for funding to enable me to pay myself to practice and audition and to hugely raise my game. My mum has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's - being an only child raised in Devon(!), I have always possessed a strong sense of family and place - but with my mum getting older I feel a daily closeness to death. I always have done. But now I have an almost irritating feeling of never having done enough - that I will never be able to do enough. I am aware that my desire to push my skills as a flautist - do make me into not such a great mother/lover/practical person. I live my days with a desire to push push push - but often do not have the right balance. I expect myself to excel as a human and as an artist. I know that is not humanely possible, and my mind doesn't believe it, but my heart does. The challenges of general daily tasks combined with the urgency of being alive actually really upsets and confounds me. I never thought it would be so hard. My mum made it look easy.

Recently, I have been considering single notes. In much of my repertoire for my last performance - the music frequently dwelt on sustained notes. The 2nd movement of Bach's G minor flute sonata, Gluck's Dance of the Blessed Spirits, Faure's Pavanne. .... this is quite an obvious observation to make.... but I am taking pleasure in this. How much can be got from a single note? Why - or HOW -  can a note be exquisite? As Spring edges in a little on Winter, I start to take pleasure in single things - a colour, a sound, a smell, a feeling. Things can become very cluttered. Music can become very cluttered. Life is cluttered. I think it is an illusion to believe that things, anythings, are simple.... but the elemental things have to be appreciated - polished, enjoyed, loved - otherwise everything is dull and sad. The photo was taken last Spring by my mum - my daughter and I enjoying the daffodils.

Be rooted and breathe. Stand a little straighter and feel comfortable! Last Sunday's afternoon concert was a memorable one for me. Thank you Lympstone entertainments for giving me the opportunity to perform an entirely solo programme. Thank you Susie Hodder-Williams for being such an insightful musician. Thank you if you came and gave your ears and eyes and stillness to the sounds and music of the flute and the composers...

Flute voices: solo.
Music for flute, piccolo and alto flute.
Lympstone Church, 20th Oct, 4pm.


Mike Mower           Two-Timer (1993)

The composer writes “This piece fluctuates between triplet and double time semiquaver metre in a question and answer feel. Try to create the impression of two instruments playing a duet, especially in the first section to letter A, where the feel changes every two bars.”

Johann Sebastian Bach                Partita in A minor for Solo Flute, BWV 1013 (c. 1722)

I  Allemande -  a dance with 4 beats in every bar, of German origin, it is serious in character but not heavy.

II  Courante -  a ‘running’ French dance.

III  Sarabande - a slow, stately dance. The earlier, livelier Sarabande has its origins in Latin America and later a slow version emerged in France and England.

IV  Bourée Angloise – a lively dance.

Francis Poulenc           Un Jouer de Flûte Berce les Ruines (1942)

‘A Flute Player Lullabies the Ruins’

Pierre-Octave Ferroud         Trois pieces pour Flûte (1921-22)

                I Bergère captive (The captivating shepherdess)  II Jade  III Toan-Yan (La fête du Double-Cinq)

A set of three pieces for solo flute in a quasi-Chinese style by French composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud (1900-1936).

The composer wrote this note describing the third movement:

"The Toan-Yan holiday (or the day of Double Five) is celebrated in China on the fifth day of the fifth month - whence its name - and it is dedicated to the commemoration of a certain hero who flung himself into a body of water and drowned rather than submit to military dishonour. The solemnity of the holiday gives way in turn to mystical and fervid dances which symbolize the contrast between peace and war."

Later in the movement, the theme marked "très libre dans la mesure" [] is described by the following annotation:

"This theme is an authentic Chinese melody that is played on the large recorder - each Chinese instrument has a monopoly on certain musical themes, on account of its form, fingering and extent. One must play it in a chanting manner [psalmodier] with extreme simplicity, and without rhythmic precision."

Michael Colquhoun         Speshal Birds (2005)

The composer writes “Speshal Birds was inspired by the birdsong I heard every May while staying in a cabin in the Green Mountains of Vermont. While there I was the guest of a very ‘speshal’ friend, Stephanie, and this piece is dedicated to her.”

Daniel Dorff       Tweet for solo piccolo (2011)

            Commissioned and premiered by American piccoloist Lois Bliss Herbine.

Flute Cake debut last Friday at Courtlands house raising money for Luca - a little boy who lost his legs because of meningitis. The house is a fantastic venue, a grand place with fantastic views of the Exe estuary. We played a programme including Debussy, Boismortier, Faure and Satie. I think we - Sophie, Jenny and myself - all feel enthused by the experience, we enjoy playing together and scrubbed up nicely! Stay tuned for more details of the treats Flute Cake have to offer. See here for a review of the event: http://www.classicaljourneyphonic.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/premiere-performance-by-new-flute-trio.html?m=1