Susan Rotholz, flute
Photo by Peter Weitzner
Praised by the New York Times as “irresistible in both music and performance,” flutist, Susan Rotholz, winner of the Young Concert Artists with Hexagon Piano and Winds and Concert Artists Guild as a soloist, continues to be in demand as a soloist, orchestral and chamber musician and teacher. Susan is Principal flute of the Greenwich Symphony and The New York Chamber Ensemble and is a member of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, The New York Pops and the Little Orchestra Society. She has toured extensively with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and also performs with the American Symphony, New York City Ballet, Westchester Philharmonic, Gotham Opera Company, Encore’s at City Center and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Susan is co-founder/director of the Sherman Chamber Ensemble and the Rodeph Sholom Chamber Music Series and performs each season with the Cape May Music Festival, Greenwich Chamber Players, Saratoga Chamber Players and the Sebago Long Lake Chamber Music Festival. Susan attended the Marlboro Music and Grand Teton Festivals, and continues to perform at the Caramoor Festival with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. As an extension of her associations at the Marlboro Festival, Susan played principal flute with the New England Bach Festival for twenty-five years conducted by Blanche Honneger Moyse.
Her recordings of the complete Bach Flute Sonatas and the Solo Partita with Kenneth Cooper, fortepiano, on the Bridge Records label received a New Classics review saying the “beguiling sounds and first-class performances make this an enchanting experience” and the Wall Street Journal described as “eloquent and musically persuasive.” Susan, with pianist Margaret Kampmeier, just released through Bridge Records, American Tapestry, Duos for Flute and Piano Beaser, Copland, Muczynski and Liebermann. “Remarkable on this recording is the stellar duo playing of Susan Rotholz and Margaret Kampmeier, who combine brilliant instrumental virtuosity with deep understanding of this quintessentially American repertoire” is how Bridge Records presents the CD.
Susan has commissioned and premiered many new works by such composers as Robert Beaser, Elizabeth Brown, Edie Hill and Eliot Bailen and has recorded George Crumb's Night of Four Moons with the acclaimed soprano, Dawn Upshaw, for Nonesuch Records. A devoted teacher and chamber music coach, Susan teaches at Columbia University, Queens College: Aaron Copland School of Music, City College CUNY and at the Manhattan School of Music Pre-College. Susan has also been a guest performer and teacher at the Colorado College Music Festival in Colorado. She holds degrees from Queens College (BM) and Yale School of Music (MM) where she studied with Thomas Nyfenger and Marcel Moyse. In 2002 she received the Norman Vincent Peale Award for Positive Thinking. She lives in New York with her cellist/composer husband, Eliot Bailen, and their three children.