Dr. Melanie Williams is a flutist and educator who specializes in performance on all kinds of Western European flutes. Based in New York City, she hails from Navarre, Florida and Newhall, Iowa. Melanie’s diverse interest in arts and music began as a Suzuki flute student at the age of seven. As an undergraduate at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (BM 2012), she was first introduced to the six-holed, one-keyed baroque flute and her loves of music and history have been inseparably intertwined since. In addition to Oberlin, Dr. Williams is an alumna of The Juilliard School (MM 2015, DMA 2020).
As a freelance flutist, Melanie has performed recently with the Handel and Haydn Society (2024), the American Classical Orchestra (2023), Upper Valley Baroque (2024), and Kollective366 (2024). She is a member of Brooklyn Baroque and enjoys performing with this ensemble at The Old Stone House in Brooklyn, NY (2024) and at the Middletown Thrall Library (2024). As a teacher, she is on faculty at The Juilliard School in the Pre-College and Extension Divisions where she teaches courses in music theory, and is flute faculty at Musart Music on Long Island where she maintains a studio of 13 flutists.
Melanie is also passionate about her own creative projects which include film and uses storytelling to connect older music with our lives today through the medium of digital film. Her films Aviary (2022) and Broceliande (2023) have both been featured in the New York Short Film Festival where they were screened at Cinema Village in New York City. These films can be found on Vimeo and on her website. Her recent recording project, Ins Sonnenlicht (2023), is the first recording of Schubert’s Sonata for Arpeggione on original early 19th century instruments. This recording is provided free at: https://melaniewilliams.hearnow.com/.
Her teachers include Sandra Miller, Michel Debost, and Judith Mendenhall.