STEPHANIE REA
Flutist and Professor
Stephanie Rea is Professor of Music at Murray State University where she serves on the Honors Faculty. She taught flute in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar (while pregnant and breastfeeding, thank you very much) and has taught over twenty different courses at Murray, two of her favorites being Music and Society and American Musical Theatre. Rea has played in orchestras, composed flute music, taught thousands of students, written a flute book, spoken and performed at scores of academic conferences and music festivals, and has most recently focused her creative efforts on her quasi-one-woman show of flute playing and storytelling as a benefit for public radio. She is curious and philosophical by nature, thrives on systems and efficiency, and is passionate about the healthy use of technology, tending her herb garden, and reading nonfiction. She and her husband are raising humans in Western Kentucky.
Long Bio
Stephanie Rea began teaching at Murray State University in Fall of 2000. She is a recipient of the university's Presidential Research Fellowship, its Teaching Innovation Faculty Fellowship, and is a Fulbright Scholar (Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2009). Her Flute Hygiene: A Guide to Developing and Maintaining the Habits the Lead to Better Flute Playing is the work of her most recent sabbatical.
Rea played with orchestras for twenty years as a regular member of the Johnson City Symphony Orchestra, Jackson Symphony Orchestra, and Paducah Symphony Orchestra and in summer festivals in Italy, Peru and the U.S. She now mostly performs as a chamber musician and soloist, and her current project, The Next Best Thing: A Flute Professor's Tragicomic Origin Story, is a one-woman show combining flute playing and storytelling.
Her undergraduate degree is from East Tennessee State University and was followed by three graduate degrees in flute performance and music theory at The Florida State University where she taught undergraduate courses in those areas under the misnomer title of Teaching Assistant (didn't really assist with anything, just taught the courses) while completing her graduate degrees. She also trained at Brevard Music Center, Talent Education Institute in Matsumoto, Japan, and the Sunflower Music Festival.
The Flutist Quarterly has called Stephanie Rea "a rising star" and "a name to be remembered". Some career highlights include appearances as a concerto soloist at the International Bach Festival, a soloist at Merkin Hall, recital and orchestral performances at the Rome Festival, and a featured soloist on the Closing Concert at the National Flute Association (NFA) Annual Convention. She has taught master classes at every level from the youngest beginners in Suzuki programs through doctoral-level university music programs at University of Michigan and Arizona State University.
Named to the roster of the Kentucky Foundation for the Humanities, she has published academic articles, written original compositions (available through Veritas Musica), and recorded an album, Solo French and American Flute Music, on the Centaur Records label that can be heard on Spotify and elsewhere.
She has served in a wide array of administrative roles in many professional music organizations, e.g., College Music Society and National Flute Association (NFA) and has served as a Peer Reviewer for faculty Fulbright applicants in music. Rea relishes the more menial, task-based, behind-the-scenes kinds of service that allow her the alone time she desperately needs to recharge, though she's been known to step up to the larger roles and offices of President of the Mid-South Flute Society, Volunteer Coordinator for NFA, and Conference Host for the College Music Society as well as the myriad needs at Murray State University like chairing committees and many of the other thankless and unpleasant yet necessary tasks of academia.
Stephanie Rea is proud to teach at a student-centered university where diversity is valued by students and faculty alike and students support each other not only during their time on campus but also in their careers after graduation. Rea largely shuns social media though can be found on LinkedIn, is married to trumpeter, Kurt Gorman, and has two kids. If you're interested on her thoughts on her personal and professional life, you can read about them in an interview featured on The Flute Examiner or just ask her.