Britta Bauer

A native of Cologne, Britta Bauer has maintained close ties to her hometown, where she teaches flute at the Rheinische Musikschule and mentors students in the Bachelor of Music Education programme at the Cologne University of Music and Dance. She has been a regular guest lecturer for flute and chamber music at the international Payerbach masterclasses (Lower Austria) since 2007 and at the Austrian Masterclasses in Zell an der Pram since 2016. She also gives seminars, courses and workshops in Germany and abroad, including at the international flute festival of the German Flute Society, for whom she coordinated the “Fluteenie” children’s and youth festival in 2017. Since 2022, she has also taught American students from the University of Redlands, California.

She maintains an active concert schedule and was principal flautist of the Hofgarten Orchestra Bonn for seven years. As a soloist, she has appeared with the Duisburg Symphony Orchestra, the Rheinische Philharmonie Koblenz and the Barockensemble Rheinklang Köln, among others. Solo concert tours have taken her throughout Germany and Austria, as well as to Bolivia, Poland and Norway, at festivals including the Vienna Festival, Uferlichter and the Rheingau Festival. She also performs successfully with the SIRIUS Trio (Andrea Wutschek, cello; Eva Salmutter, piano), which made its debut at the Vienna Festival in 2005 and has since toured widely across Europe. Bauer frequently collaborates with dancers, poets, light artists and labyrinth builders on crossover projects that open new approaches to flute performance, centring on improvisation and free interaction on stage.

Her training spans flute, music education, medicine and educational science, with studies in Bonn, Cologne, Berlin, Paris and Salzburg, all completed with distinction. She studied for several years with Pierre-Yves Artaud at the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Paris, where she gained crucial insights into French Fin-de-Siècle repertoire, and also worked with Arlette Biget at the Conservatoire National d’Orléans. Further artistic influences include Marianne Geise, James Galway, Ricarda Bröhl, Peter-Lukas Graf, Wolfgang Schulz and Greg Pattillo.

Thanks to her medical background, the concept of the “body as instrument” plays a central role in her flute teaching. Bauer completed specialist training in Musicians’ Medicine and Music Physiology in Artistic Practice and developed her own approach specifically for flute pedagogy: “The Body Sounds.” She is regularly invited to present this concept at seminars in Germany, in Łódź (Poland), and at international festivals of the German Flute Society (DGfF). She also offers advanced training courses on mental practice and on learning and practice strategies in instrumental pedagogy. As a board member of the German Flute Society, she founded the Internationale Wettbewerb für junge Flötistinnen und Flötisten in 2018 together with Ruth Wentorf; originally held in Wetzlar, it has continued successfully online (due to the coronavirus pandemic) since 2020.

Besides her teaching, Bauer serves as a jury member for Germany’s largest youth music competition, Jugend Musiziert, and as an expert advisor for flute at the German Music Council. She is regularly invited to adjudicate competitions organised by the UGDA in Luxembourg, the International Dutch Flute Competition, and youth competitions under the umbrella of the European Union of Music Competitions for Youth. She has published articles in several music education journals and contributed to the 2015 book on musical giftedness What if my child doesn’t seem gifted? (ed. Mil Aivlis). In 2017, Schott Music published her annotated edition of Emil Kronke’s Kolibris as part of their “Student Edition” series.

Bauer is a board member of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Flöte (DGfF) and the ELLI Music Foundation and serves as the German representative on the International Flute Council (IFC).

Alongside her teaching at the Mozarteum University, she served from 2017 to 2022 as deputy head of the Department of Brass, Wind and Percussion Instruments and was a member of the University Senate—acting as its deputy chair from March 2018 to October 2019. She was elected spokesperson for the non-professorial teaching staff within the Senate in October 2018, a role confirmed in 2019. She sits on appointment committees, serves on the curriculum committees for Instrumental Pedagogy Studies and Performance Studies, is a substitute delegate to the Workers’ Council, and is a member of the examination board of the Vorarlberg State Conservatory under the cooperation agreement. She also leads a flute workshop at the Salzburg Kinderuniversität in collaboration with Rainer Buland. The annual “Flute Pedagogy Action Day,” which she initiated, has become a fixed part of the academic calendar. Since May 2019 she has co-led the Pre-College as team spokesperson. In July 2020 she completed her habilitation at the Mozarteum University.