FE Intermediate Repertoire Project

For the past year or so, I’ve been actively searching for new and “new to me” repertoire for my middle school students. At our school, we program a recital featuring music of under-represented composers and I’ve had to search to find pieces that are at an appropriate level for my students. Many of the rep lists that I’ve found online and that I already have are great, but the pieces are just too hard for my students. Another goal of mine was to find new music, as I get tired of teaching the same pieces all the time. Yes, they are “new” to my students, but I want to have more things from which to choose. Other flute teachers who teach a lot of middle school students have given me great suggestions about good pieces which their students love.   

We at Flute Examiner feel that there are many in our community who could benefit from easy access to a collection of pieces like this, so we are starting the Flute Examiner Intermediate Repertoire Project. We are going to collect recommendations, create a spreadsheet and make that available to the flute community. We do need your help in the form of your recommendations for favorite pieces for intermediate flutists. We want to hear from all of you – flute teachers who teach 40 middle school kids a week, middle school students who have favorite pieces they are currently playing, high school and college students who have favorite pieces from back in the day, amateur flutists, people who teach adult beginners, and people who play the flute for fun (which should be all of us).  If you play a flute, then you probably have a suggestion or two that you could contribute to the cause. We encourage you to share this article with the flutists in your life by posting on your own social media. We want to get as much input as possible – the collective wisdom here is significant.

You can submit your recommendations in one of four ways: 1) leave a comment under this post, 2) email Kelly at wellness [at] thefluteexaminer.com, 3) fill out this Google form, or 4) comment on our FE instagram or Facebook feed.

I’ll start – here are 4 things that my students and I are loving. 

1) Legends for Flute by Valerie Coleman

~ There are 4 movements here and one of my students did the first movement for Solo and Ensemble last month. They are lovely and accessible.

2) Intermediate Duets by Valerie Coleman : Rojo Tango, Chanson de la Riviére for two flutes, Anthem for Peace for two flutes

3) Inspiring Flute Solos by Karen North (ed).  

~ This is a collection of 30 works for unaccompanied flute, specifically for intermediate level flute players, commissioned from contemporary composers around the world. There are also some arrangements of music from the 19th and 20th centuries. Recordings can be found on YouTube at “theyoungfluteplayer” (no spaces) channel;  see the playlist for Inspiring Flute Solos. Very excited about this book – I’ve got another student working on three from this collection for spring recital date.

4) Lyrical Flute Legends by Karen North (ed.) 

~ This is a collection of 20 intermediate level works for flute and piano, featuring exclusively commissioned works by contemporary composers and inspiring new arrangements of 19th and 20th century compositions by Australian flutist Karen North.  Biographies of all the composers are included, as well as notes and performance suggestions for each work.

Free flute and piano recordings, as well as piano backing tracks for every piece can be found on YouTube at “theyoungfluteplayer” (no spaces) channel; see the playlist for Lyrical Flute Legends.

(check out our recent article by Karen North about this process at…)

5) For young piccolo players: Acrobatics by Jessica Daniels 

~ I’ve been teaching this piece for years. It’s great for relatively new piccolo players.