Katy Bircher | Flute

Flutist Katy Bircher talks about her career and tells a story about a Gabrieli performance that went comically wrong.

How did you get your start in music?
I have wanted to play the flute for as long as I can remember – a true child of the James Galway era! – and spent some years playing the recorder out of the side of my mouth until I was big enough to have flute lessons. But it was the shiny modern flute which I was interested in and early flutes didn’t feature in my dreams until I went to a performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion on period instruments in 1993 where I had a Road to Damascus moment. Suddenly I knew that I had to play THAT instrument and I had to play THAT music.

Why switch to early flutes? What is it about the experience of playing them that is different?
I’m not sure why this sudden conversion occurred, but since studying early flutes I have not only fallen increasingly in love with their beautiful, flexible and expressive tone, but also with the way in which they direct the player. When one approaches 18th century music on a baroque flute, the instrument dictates a huge amount about how the music should be played. There are certain things it will refuse to do and many, many more which it will encourage, if not demand! Because these are the instruments composers were writing for, one feels much closer to the music, and the player and instrument are a team interpretationally as well as in terms of sonority.

When did you first start working for Gabrieli Consort & Players?
I first started working for the Gabrielis in July 1996 - my first date with a ’proper’ baroque orchestra. Now I work for many groups in England and abroad and have had fantastic opportunities, working with inspirational musicians and touring extensively. It is a great life – always challenging, interesting and fun. To do what I have always wanted to do and to work with such great colleagues is a privilege.

What do you like about working for Gabrieli and Paul McCreesh?
I greatly enjoy the variety which a freelance life provides, but Gabs always feels like home. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been playing with the group for a long time, and because I have so many good friends in the orchestra, but also, I think, because Paul allows his players great freedom of expression within a clearly delineated ’house style’.

What do you do when you're not playing the flute?
When not playing and teaching the flute, I tend to my other great passion – cycling! I have a super light carbon frame road bike and a drawerful of lycra and spend my free time cycling around the Hertfordshire countryside or (the sign of true obsession?) round and round Regents Park’s Outer Circle! A few years ago I cycled solo from John O’ Groats to Land’s End and for the last couple of years I have taken part in the London Triathlon with fellow Gabrieli flautist Brinley Yare and erstwhile Gabrieli keyboard player James Johnstone.

Tell us a story!
One of my first appearances with the Gabrielis was in a Bach programme which included Cantata 180. This was the only piece I was in - and only one movement of that. The solo flute part is printed on three pages, with no conveniently placed bars rest in which to turn the page. It had been my intention to tape the photocopied third sheet in place, but somehow I didn’t get round to it – and it had been fine in the rehearsal…. However, when it came to the moment in the performance, I stood up on a rather wobbly wooden podium and, within only a few bars, the precariously balanced photocopy made a bid for freedom and fluttered off over the heads of the violinists below. Amidst the semiquavers I wondered what to do. I looked ahead to see if some bars rest had miraculously appeared. They had not. I wondered whether I knew the music from memory. Probably, but this didn’t seem the moment to find out. Then one of the violinists appeared from below and, on tiptoe, managed to put the music back on the stand. Relief! At that point Charles Daniels started singing with characteristic brilliance and exuberance, causing the podium to wobble and to dislodge my music AGAIN! I could see my colleagues’ horror stricken faces and then the music being retrieved and passed round the orchestra and back to one of the soloists who had to negotiate the end of my flute to get the music back into position. I had managed to involve everyone in one of the few movements they didn’t have to play in. I felt dreadful, and sure that my career with Gabrieli Consort & Players was over. Somehow I survived to play another day and have never travelled without tape since! Still, that was nothing compared to the time when a whole recording was put in jeopardy by a table football injury. But that isn’t my tale to tell…