LEONE BUYSE is the Joseph and Ida Kirkland Mullen Professor of Flute at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. In 1993 she relinquished her position with the Boston Symphony Orchestra to pursue a more active teaching and solo career after 22 years as an orchestral musician. Acting principal flutist of the BSO during her last three years in Boston, she was invited by Seiji Ozawa to join the orchestra in 1983 as assistant principal flutist and principal flutist of the Boston Pops. Previously she served as assistant principal flutist of the San Francisco Symphony and played solo piccolo and second flute with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.

[leone-w-flute-on-black] The only American finalist in the 1969 Geneva International Flute Competition, Ms. Buyse has appeared as soloist with l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Boston Symphony, the Boston Pops, the San Francisco Symphony, the Utah Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic, and the New Hampshire Music Festival, of which she was principal flutist for ten years. She has performed with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players throughout Europe and Japan, with the Tokyo, Juilliard, Brentano, and Muir String Quartets, the Boston Musica Viva, Da Camera of Houston, and in recital with Jessye Norman and Yo-Yo Ma. Ms. Buyse has also been a guest artist on the National Arts Centre Orchestra’s chamber series in Ottawa. Summer festival appearances include Aspen, Sarasota, Norfolk, Orcas Island, Domaine Forget (Quebec), ARIA International Summer Academy, the Ithaca Flute Institute, Youth Orchestra of the Americas, Sitka, Maui, Steamboat Springs, Strings in the Mountains, the Lake Placid Institute, and the Park City International Festival in Utah. With her husband, clarinetist Michael Webster, she performs in the Webster Trio and the Buyse-Webster Duo.

Widely renowned as an educator, Ms. Buyse has taught at the University of Michigan, the New England Conservatory, Boston University, the Tanglewood Music Center, the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, and as a visiting associate professor at the Eastman School of Music. Her students hold positions in many major orchestras, including the symphony orchestras of San Francisco, Cleveland, St. Louis, Houston, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Syracuse, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Florida Orchestra, the Colorado Symphony, the New Zealand Symphony, the Singapore Symphony, the National Taiwan Symphony, and the Adelaide Symphony. Others are professors at such schools as the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Arizona State, Memorial University (St. John’s, Newfoundland), Ball State University (Muncie, IN) and St. Olaf College.

Ms. Buyse has presented recitals and master classes at universities, conservatories and festivals across the United States, as well as in Canada, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Panama, Chile, and Brazil. She may be heard as solo flutist on numerous recordings of the Boston Symphony, Boston Pops and the San Francisco Symphony for the Philips, Deutsche Grammophon, RCA Victor, and Sony Classical labels. Her solo and chamber music recordings are available on the Crystal, Boston Records, CRI, Centaur, Hyperion, Elektra/Nonesuch, Equilibrium, Danacord, and Nami/Live Notes labels.

A native of Ithaca, New York, Ms. Buyse graduated with distinction from the Eastman School of Music, where she was a student of Joseph Mariano. Awarded a Fulbright grant, she subsequently studied in France with Michel Debost, Jean-Pierre Rampal, and Marcel Moyse. Also an accomplished pianist, she served for two years as accompanist at Rampal’s summer master classes in Nice, France. An active member of the National Flute Association, she has served on the Board of Directors and as program chair for the 1987 convention in St. Louis, an event attended by more than 2200 flutists. She has been a featured soloist at NFA conventions in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, Columbus, San Diego, Anaheim, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and Orlando.

During the 2010 convention in Anaheim Ms. Buyse was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of outstanding contributions to the flute community worldwide.

After 40 years with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, legendary principal harpist, Ann Hobson Pilot, retired at the end of the Tanglewood 2009 season. Ann Hobson Pilot is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music under Alice Chalifoux. She became principal harp of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1980, having joined the BSO in 1969 as assistant principal harp and principal with the Boston Pops. Before that she was substitute second harp with the Pittsburgh Symphony and principal harp of the Washington National Symphony. Ms. Pilot has had an extensive solo career. She has performed with many American orchestras as soloist, as well as with orchestras in Europe, Haiti, New Zealand, and South Africa. She has several CDs available on the Boston Records label, as well as on the Koch International and Denouement labels. In September 1999 she traveled to London to record, with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Harp Concerto by the young American composer Kevin Kaska, a work that she commissioned. In May of 2010, Ms. Pilot was the recipient of an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Tufts University. She has received numerous awards including the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1993 and again in 2010, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Boston Musicians Association in 2010, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Talent Development League of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in January of 2014. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Bridgewater State College in 1988. In 1997 she traveled to South Africa to record a video documentary, “A Musical Journey”, sponsored by the Museum of Afro-American History and WGBH. The film aired nationwide on PBS for three years. While there she performed with the National Symphony of Johannesburg and visited the San people of Namibia. Ms. Pilot recently retired from the faculties of the New England Conservatory of Music and Boston University. She will now be affiliated with the State College of Florida, Fl. in addition to the Tanglewood Music Center and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. She has performed with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Marlboro Music Festival, Newport Music Festival, Sarasota Music Festival and the Ritz Chamber Players. After the 2009 Tanglewood concerts and her official retirement, Pilot returned to the stage as soloist with the BSO opening the Boston Symphony season and the Carnegie Hall season with the premiere of a concerto written for her by John Williams, “On Willows and Birches” a concerto for harp and orchestra. On October 3, the orchestra paid tribute to her dedicating the entire concert in her honor and featuring her in two other works for solo harp in addition to the Williams. Producer Susan Dangel has recently completed a new half-hour documentary that will tell the story of her life in music, “A Harpist’s Legacy, Ann Hobson Pilot and the Sound of Change”. It has aired on PBS stations nationwide. The 2013 season brought the release of her new CD - music of the Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla, for harp, violin and bandoneon, with Lucia Lin, violinist with the Boston Symphony and the Muir String Quartet, and bandoneonist, JP Jofre. The end of the 2016 season brought several important concerts including a performance on Sept. 24 at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. In October she performed the Ginastera Concerto with the Buenos Aires Philharmonic at the historic Teatro Colon to a sold-out audience, then in November she performed the Ginastera in Boston with the Boston Civic Symphony at Jordan Hall. Pilot once again ended the season in her role as artistic advisor and harpist for the classicalpops festival in Barbado's www.classicalpops.com. Her most recent performances were in January of 2019 with Maestro Thomas Wil-kins and the Omaha Symphony and her debut with the International Chamber Music Festival “La Musica” in Sarasota, FL as well as a performance of the Ginas-tera Concerto with the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Orchestra on July 27, 2019 at Seiji Ozawa Hall in Lenox, MA. She and her husband, Prentice Pilot, are currently residents of Osprey, Florida.

Leone Buyse, Boston Symphony Orchestra's Acting 1st Flute, and Ann Hobson Pilot, BSO's Principal Harpist