Keep things up beat, interesting, entertaining and playable when planning your flute choir program. Include some canons or three part rounds that you can talk to the audience about. Have players demonstrate how these pieces work. Selections can be successfully included all the way from duets, trios and quartets to full flute choir arrangements. Even music scored for smaller ensembles is a great sound with more players. Also vary the type of music. For example with the amount of flute music available you could include classical, jazz, world, folk, holiday, Americana, popular, contemporary, sacred, standards and movie music. Different venues, events or audiences should all be considered when you plan your program. Remember, audiences love to hear music they know and that the simplest melodies and arrangements can be very entertaining and fun to play.
What about acoustics?
Be aware that many venues will have challenging acoustics. Playing Stars & Stripes Forever inside a Senior Living facility with three piccolos would set off many a hearing aid and may not get you invited back. We have also found that some venues do not lend themselves to low, slow, quiet pieces. You will have to discover this by trial and error.
From the other side of things, our public market has many distracting sounds from restaurants, stores and shoppers so we cannot hear ourselves well. However, people tell us that we can be heard well throughout the building, so we continue to play there each year and just do the best we can. It is an important community gathering place.
