The composer, pedagogue, conductor, and international flutist is both esteemed and prolific—with no end apparent in his varied schedule. His longtime friend contributes both a full oral history, available at the Library of Congress, and this profile.
Were it only for Robert Aitken’s more than 60 recordings, ranging from the complete concerti of C.P.E. Bach to all the flute solos and flute chamber music of Toru Takemitsu, there would be no question that his impact on the world of music is significant and meaningful. The recordings reveal not only the singular musical voice of the flutist, composer, and conductor, but also the wide-ranging interests of a man whose musical journeys have taken him from chant to Bach to the music of the most creative and influential composers of the 20th and 21st centuries.
But the recordings are only the most obvious documentation of Aitken as an artist and individual. Two years ago, I set out to discover the “essence” of Robert Aitken and his 60-year career through the NFA Archives and Oral History Committee’s continuing project chronicling significant flutists, including all recipients of the NFA’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which Aitken received in 2003.
My long-time friendship with Bob helped guide my approach to our interviews, conducted in November 2016 in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia (close to his hometown of Kentville) and in May 2018 at his current home in Toronto. The full oral history is now housed in the Library of Congress, available to all. Here is a distillation of 10-plus hours of talking together at the kitchen table at a mid-19th-century house in Lunenburg.
Early Days
Robert Aitken has had—and continues to have—a career quite different from that of most top flute soloists. In addition to a rich life as a touring soloist and chamber musician that followed his early career in the Vancouver Symphony and as principal flutist in the Toronto Symphony under Seiji Ozawa for six years in his 20s, Aitken has been internationally prominent as a composer, educator, conductor, advocate for new music (by both the world’s greatest living composers and young, emerging composers), director of a major and long-lived new music series, founder of important music programs in different parts of Canada, and—speaking of Canada—international artist who happens to be Canadian.
Naturally, with the interview venue so close to his hometown of Kentville, we started off by talking about his childhood, where his first flute teacher was actually not a flutist at all —there weren’t any flutists for miles around! Latvian immigrant violinist Janis Kalejs, a teacher at Acadia University in nearby Wolfville, recognized Bob’s talent and gave him musical coaching as a child. In addition to the lessons, the young Aitken played in the university orchestra and also in the Kentville Fireman’s Band.
The Aitken family moved often during their son’s early childhood. During a short time living in Pennsylvania, Bob had his first flute teacher, Ray Kauffman, who played in the Harrisburg Symphony. The Aitkens lived not far from where John Wummer had his summer home, and Bob has fond memories of going to Wummer’s house and listening to him play duos, trios, and quartets with his wife Mildred Hunt Wummer and his teacher.
But the family soon moved back to Nova Scotia and, once again, Bob was without a teacher. However, Kauffman had set him up with Berbiguier etudes and Bach sonatas, and Bob had lots to study and learn on his own. The family finally relocated to Toronto and, at age 15, Bob had his first major flute teacher, Nick Fiori, then principal of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
As a teenager, Bob started playing extra with the orchestra and, at 19, won the audition for principal flutist in Vancouver—the youngest player in a professional symphony anywhere in Canada. Bob actually turned down an offer from Julius Baker to attend Juilliard and study with him, opting instead for the Vancouver job.
Early Career
Bob stayed very close to Fiori through those days. When he decided to leave Vancouver—despite the hiking, golfing, and invaluable musical experience, Bob couldn’t see himself staying in that job, away from his family, for his entire career—he returned to school in Toronto to get a degree in composition. Fiori was very supportive and welcomed him back to the flute world, and Bob supported himself with a dizzying amount of freelance work while getting his degree (in composition!) at the University of Toronto with John Weinzweig.
Bob received a Canada Council grant and spent a year in Europe (1964–65) studying with Gazzeloni, Graf, Rampal, and others. He became principal flutist of the Toronto Symphony under Seiji Ozawa in 1965 and stayed in that position for six seasons. He became a student of Marcel Moyse, along with his teacher Nick Fiori, driving to Vermont for lessons and becoming a regular at the Marlboro Music Festival.
All the time he was incredibly busy as a soloist and chamber musician around Canada. He related that several times he flew to Montréal twice in one day to fulfill rehearsal and concert commitments there and in Toronto, and once played the Ibert Concerto in a Boise, Idaho, matinee concert and made it back to Toronto the same night to the second half of the Toronto Symphony’s evening concert. During one two-year period in the late ’60s, Bob flew more than 200 flights—and has the records in his archives to prove it.
Bob worked with Stravinsky at the CBC Radio Symphony; with Glenn Gould, Oscar Shumsky, and Leonard Rose at the Stratford International Festival; and with Moyse in Vermont at the Marlboro Festival. He also composed, studied electronic music, taught at the University of Toronto, attended many music festivals across Canada, and received invitations from all over Europe (he took more than 30 trips to Iceland alone) and eventually throughout Asia as well.
Maturing Artist
After six frenetic years, Bob decided to leave the Toronto Symphony in 1970 to pursue the rest of his career full time—but not until he came back from a six-month trip around the world, a trip undertaken to “clear my head, to clear everything.” He traveled by bus and train—“like a hippie with money”—to Japan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, India, and Turkey.
The trip had a profound influence on Bob as a person and particularly as a composer. His early works were especially influenced by the sounds and music he heard on this trip. His early solos, Icicle and Plainsong, are widely played. His catalogue includes music for flute and orchestra, wind quintet, mixed ensemble, and flute orchestra—the latter, Solemsis and Tsunami, commissioned by the NFA. His body of compositions would fill an article unto itself.
As a teacher, Bob was profoundly influenced by Moyse. And, in his own professorship at the Hochshule in Freiberg, at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta and Music at Shawnigan in British Columbia, and in hundreds of masterclasses given all over the world from Iceland to Korea to Slovenia to Seattle, Bob has profoundly influenced many others.
Collaborator
Much of our conversation had to do with the many significant composers and performers with whom Bob had close relationships, from Elliott Carter to Toru Takemitsu, Seiji Ozawa to Glenn Gould, Pierre Boulez to Henry Brant to Heinz Holliger. Of course, Bob was close to a large array of Canadian artists, from harpsichordist Greta Kraus to R. Murray Schafer.
Together with soprano Mary Morrison and Bob’s wife Marion, he founded the Lyric Arts Trio early in his career. The trio commissioned dozens of Canadian composers among the hundreds of composers whose works he championed through the 48-year-old series, New Music Concerts, that he co-founded in Toronto with composer Norma Beecroft in 1971.
Aitken met Takemitsu in the early 1970s. Starting with his playing and recording of the early Takemitsu duos for two flutes and a memorable performance of November Steps with the Toronto Symphony, Bob received many invitations to Japan for concerts and festivals. Among his dozens of recordings, one of the highlights is the double CD of all of Takemitsu’s solo and chamber music with flute. Takemitsu, Bob related, was an excellent cook, a world traveler, and a generous host. Bob treasured him greatly as an inspiration and as a friend.
Bob met and played with Glenn Gould in his early professional days in Toronto. At the Stratford International Festival, they rehearsed and performed—together with the “best players” from all over Canada—the fourth and fifth Brandenburg concerti and the entire Musical Offering. Aitken told me that although Gould loved to rehearse in fine detail, when it came to the performance, “Just forget it! One for one, it was every man for himself!”
One of Bob’s longtime friends and colleagues is the great Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer. Bob premiered the 1984 Schafer Flute Concerto with the Montréal Symphony under Charles Dutoit. It was a bit of a fluke that he was even hired; Montréal had a fine principal flutist at that time in Tim Hutchins, and it was in an era in which solo flutists—especially Canadian ones—were rarely engaged by major orchestras.
Schafer had previously written music for Aitken, including a very early Sonatina for flute and harpsichord. But the Concerto was a major piece, its premiere a major event. Aitken calls it “certainly the most successful concerto of our time, without any doubt.” He said that although it sounds brilliant and difficult, “it’s not, because it’s idiomatic; it is written very well for the flute.” Aitken has performed the Schafer 18 times throughout Canada, in European cities, and at the 2003 NFA Convention in Las Vegas, the year of his Lifetime Achievement Award.
Lesser-known but equally important as a mentor and friend was harpsichordist Greta Kraus. Viennese-born and a schoolmate of Rudolf Serkin, Kraus began her career as a pianist but early on became a harpsichordist. For quite a few years, Aitken met with her once a week and “we would play the whole afternoon, playing Bach Sonatas and all the Baroque repertoire.”
They started performing with just a concert here, a concert there, but then began offering a regular series that sold out each time. When other career demands necessitated an end to this collaboration, Aitken passed his role on to his flutist daughter Dianne Aitken, who continued the Thursday afternoon tradition and the family relationship.
Toronto’s New Music Concert series is a testament to Aitken’s ability to create and sustain an important cultural institution which, since its founding in 1971, has presented nearly 400 concerts, commissioned more than 130 Canadian and international works, and performed 700 Canadian and world premieres.
Into the Future
Robert Aitken turned 79 last August and is as busy as ever. The most recent premiere of his music was in summer 2017 in Nova Scotia, a work entitled “Lunenburg (Shadows VII)” for flute, soprano, and string quartet. And there is a new solo flute piece on its way.
His last formal teaching job, in Freiberg, ended after 14 years because of a mandatory age-65 retirement, but his current annual flute classes take place in Nova Scotia and Italy. He plays concerts in Myanmar in November and is putting the final touches on the 49th New Music Concert season.
I look forward to welcoming him to Seattle in March 2019 to work with the Seattle Modern Orchestra and the Seattle Flute Society as a composer, flutist, conductor, and teacher—and to continuing our long friendship.
Paul Taub is a Seattle flutist who recently retired from Cornish College of the Arts after 39 years on the faculty. He has served two terms on the board of directors of the NFA and is president of the Seattle Flute Society.
This article first appeared in the winter 2019 issue of The Flutist Quarterly, the member magazine of the National Flute Association, and is reprinted here with permission. nfaonline.org.
Seattle Modern Orchestra is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike.