Alumni Spotlight: Julie Scolnik ’85 MM

Julie Scolnik has enjoyed a diverse musical career as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral flutist. The 2022-2023 season marks Ms. Scolnik’s twenty-sixth year as Founding Artistic Director of Mistral Music, one of New England’s Premier Chamber Ensembles.

Scolnik has performed as principal flute with many of Boston’s leading orchestras including Emmanuel Music, the Boston Ballet, Pops, and Opera orchestras. As a guest flutist at festivals across the U.S. and France, Julie has collaborated with world-class artists and chamber groups including the Arabella, Brentano, Lydian, and Borromeo String Quartets. She presented an annual fall recital at the Salle Cortot in Paris, France for many years and is an active soloist in the U.S. She currently performs in festivals of Provence each summer and maintains a private flute studio in her home.

Since her recovery from breast cancer in 2005, Scolnik has performed and curated benefit concerts to support women with the disease including two full orchestral concerts in 2010 and 2019 in Jordan Hall, and a concert in May 2014 at the Hotel de Ville de Paris, for the League Contre le Cancer. 

In 2021, Koehler Books published Scolnik's debut memoir, Paris Blue - a story of the tenacious grip of first love, which lingered in the corridors of Scolnik’s psyche for over forty years. The book has resonated across boundaries and won over a dozen awards.

Scolnik lives in Boston with her husband, physicist Michael Brower, and her two cats, Daphne and Chloë. They have two adult children who are also NEC alumni: pianist Sophie Scolnik-Brower and cellist Sasha Scolnik-Brower, and they perform frequently together. Ms. Scolnik has released three solo CDs, two with her daughter: Salut d’Amour & Other Songs of Love, and the recently-released complete Bach flute Sonatas with Parma Records.

Why did you choose NEC?
I was living and working as a professional flutist in Boston and was looking for an opportunity to connect with other musicians in an academic and performing environment.

What have you been up to since graduating from NEC?
I have led a rich and diverse career as a concert flutist. My role as Founding Artistic Director of Mistral Music has brought me accolades for the high caliber of its artists as well as my personal approach to presenting concerts. 

In 2010 and 2019 I invited the world-renowned conductor Sir Simon Rattle to conduct a full orchestral concert in NEC’s Jordan Hall, for a benefit for underserved women fighting breast cancer. Musicians from across the country who knew each other from music festivals, conservatories, or former orchestra jobs performed together in an emotional reunion. I chose the program and spoke about how I was lucky to have survived breast cancer—not just because of my family or the world class hospitals nearby, but because of the fundamental role that music played in my healing. Both these concerts were not only deeply meaningful musically and emotionally, but they raised over $100K for women who needed the support.

In 2021, I published Paris Blue, an award-winning memoir that is set against a backdrop of Paris and classical music, and is a story about the grip of first love and the role of memory in our lives.

How have your NEC experiences shaped your artistic approach?
I knew that competing with dozens of flutists for the best parts in an orchestral concert was going to be challenging. I was fortunate that my freelance career was very successful, and I loved playing with opera and ballet orchestras, chamber orchestras, and in solo and chamber recitals. Once I founded my own chamber music series, I realized it was the perfect creative outlet for me.

Share any other stories about what has inspired you at NEC and beyond.
Over the past forty years, my career as a professional flutist has exposed me to a wide range of jobs, from weddings and funerals, to pit orchestras of Broadway shows, to freelancing as principal flute with opera and ballet orchestras, and as a regular sub with the Boston Symphony. Finally, at the age of forty, I founded Mistral Music, my dream job.

I discovered that connecting with my community through an intimate concert experience was not only tremendously gratifying, but was the perfect outlet to share what meant most to me in life. I think that the success of my music series is due in large part to the rapport I have developed with my audience through the personal stories I tell and the messages I write in the program booklets.

I often program music that has altered my own sensibilities, with the hope it will do the same for my audience members. I will introduce a piece by recounting where I first heard and fell in love with it, and I explain how hearing it conjures the memories and emotions of that moment in time. My desire to share an experience I have had with a piece of music is very much like a writer’s desire to tell a story.

Do you have any advice for young musicians/current NEC students?
Be yourself, don't imitate others, and find your niche.

Young musicians need to know that there is room for them in the world, as crowded as it may seem at times. I have always believed that success lies not in the numbers of people sitting in the audience, but in the honesty and emotional depth of the experience. I have been content to keep my series on the small side. Playing intimate concerts for music lovers, feeling the exchange, seeing the faces, the tears, the smiles of our audience members standing with gratitude after a performance—that is my definition of success.
 

Learn more about Julie:

Graduation year: 1985
Degree: Master of Music
Major: Flute Performance
Current Job: Founding Artistic Director of Mistral Music, and award-winning author of Paris Blue

Website: JulieScolnik.com and MistralMusic.org
Facebook: facebook.com/jscolnik
Instagram: @julie_scolnik
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/julie-scolnik-a9a16533