Dr. Tony Watson

Flute Teacher

Tony Watson

SAA Member

Contact

Louisville, KY
502-718-2011
[javascript protected email address]
Tonywatson.org

Tony Watson has more than thirty-five years studio flute teaching experience. His students have earned top honors, winning concerto competitions and seats in youth orchestras, All-State Bands, and university orchestras. He is also a member of the music faculty at the Montessori School of Louisville, where he teaches band and general music to toddlers through middle school.

Dr. Watson is an active performer, having performed with the Louisville Orchestra, the Kentucky Opera, the Louisville Master Chorale, the Louisville Philharmonia, and the Evansville Philharmonic. He has appeared in pit orchestras at CenterStage Theatre, the Sacred Heart School of Performing Arts, and the Kentucky Country Day School. Other collaborators have included Actors Theatre and Squallis Puppeteers. Formerly principal flutist with the Colorado Gilbert and Sullivan Festival(CO)and the DeKalb Wind Symphony(GA), he has performed with the Jefferson Symphony(CO), Orchestra Atlanta, the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra, the woodwind quintet Montage and with the Pandean Players Wind Chamber Ensemble. In 2000-01, he was featured as flute soloist with the Atlanta Boy Choir on their tours of the Canadian Maritime Provinces and throughout Italy, including performances at the Papal Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi,St Mark’s Basilica in Venice and St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. In 2006, he was a winner of the National Flute Association’s Convention Performers Competition in Pittsburgh.

Also an Orff Schulwerk specialist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orff_Schulwerk), Tony Watson earned certification Levels I-III while teaching in the Fulton and DeKalb County Schools in metropolitan Atlanta. At the University of Louisville he has led Orff Schulwerk enrichment classes at the Suzuki Piano Institute and the Suzuki String Institute as well as for the Louisville Suzuki String Association’s Fall Workshop.

Tony Watson earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Flute Performance with a minor in Music Education from the University of Georgia, the Master of Music degree in Flute Performance from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the Bachelor of Music degree in Music Education from Valdosta State University. His dissertation,The Flute Pedagogy of Toshio Takahashi,surveys the teaching technique of the Suzuki Flute School author. In addition, Dr. Watson completed extensive teacher training at the East Tennessee Suzuki Flute Institute and the Talent Education Institute in Matsumoto, Japan where he studied with Toshio Takahashi. His teachers have included Angeleita Floyd, Geoffrey Gilbert, Carl Hall, Angela Jones-Reus, Peter Lloyd and Toshio Takahashi.

As the National Flute Association’s Masterclass Reporter from 2004 to 2008, Tony Watson helped to bring the Masterclass listing to its electronic form and published the Masterclass listing in Flutist Quarterly for five years. He has presented on various flute-related topics at the National Flute Convention, The Kentucky Flute Society and the Indiana Music Educators Association Conference.

A founding advisor and past President of the Atlanta Flute Club, Dr. Watson is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Flute Society of Kentucky and served as Program Chair for the Kentucky Flute Festival held at the University of Louisville, January, 2015.