I am originally from the United States and have been living and working in The Netherlands since 2009. Thanks to my fantastic teacher Immanuel Davis at the University of Minnesota, I was introduced to the traverso back in 2006, enjoying concerts and masterclasses from Wilbert Hazelzet and Barthold Kuijken when they visited Minneapolis. After my modern flute studies, I ventured on a one-year, self-made study with Wilbert Hazelzet at the Utrecht Conservatory. That original intention to stay for one year completely backfired after falling in love with my new surroundings and musical study on historical flutes. Fifteen years and a Bachelors (Utrecht) and Masters (The Hague) degree later, I’m very much enjoying my musical life in Europe. Alongside a blooming private lesson practice in Utrecht, I’m happy to share the stage with my colleague Kate Clark in Ton Koopman’s Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir.

Kristen's website
The first thing you do when you pick up your traverso to start the practice day, and why?
The very first thing I do is to look up and out.
It sounds silly but I like to bring my awareness to not just my own body and instrument but to the space I’m in, whether that’s at home looking out the window or on stage gazing out into the public. It has a calming effect and helps me to focus on what I’m about to do. From there, the eyes can close for more of a meditative practice but the initial thing is a broad, wide gaze outward.
 
The first thing I’m searching for in any practice session is the resonance of the instrument with my own body. I like to take plenty of time to simply move slowly between whichever pitches are demanding more attention today than others. It’s my moment to have a dialogue with the flute. Historical flute players know that the wood offers a unique palette of sound colors, each pitch capable of multiple shades. I like to stay open to these in the very beginning without any rigid structure.
Any recurring piece to play every day, and why?​
I don't yet have a 'greatest hits' list for my daily practice. In fact, I try to keep the repertoire as varied as possible, even when practicing familiar pieces. For example, if I'm working on something I know very well, I'll search for something in an adjacent tonality which offers similar challenges but which may be relatively 'new' to me. To go even further, during the first part of my warm-up/practice, I like to play recurring melodies or motifs which I myself have thought up (or maybe think I thought up myself!). It helps to bring me into my own creative 'composer brain.' This somehow gives a bit of insight into how the composers were thinking and offers a broader understanding of the music in general.
Do you have a daily routine?​
I try to treat each day as unique. At the beginning of the week (or in some cases, at the beginning of a project), I like to sit down and evaluate some tasks that will definitely need to be addressed.
Some days will require more ‘whittle work’ with the fingers and others will of necessity require that I sit down with a score to grasp what the role of the flute is in the whole of the piece I’m working on. This variety helps to keep my thinking elastic, encouraging some playful curiosity as new things start to come up.
In my modern studies there was a rigidity in daily practice, as if doing certain exercises would somehow guarantee success or rather, safeguard against failure. Now, I feel free from this way of thinking, as I choose to build my practice from a place of CURIOSITY.
What kind of goals do you set for your practice?​
For me it’s important to maintain freedom of movement regardless of tricky technical passages. One of my goals is to maintain a state of lightness and agility so I can tackle the most challenging things with an ease of effort. The lightness comes from a healthy tension in the right areas. If I manage to align myself in such a way that the technical demands are not interfering with my interpretation of the character of the piece, then I’ve achieved my goal.
Do you do any systematic warm-up?
I hesitate to call it systematic as it is absolutely dependent on what I am working on at the moment. Part of my initial improvisation moment is of course moving from long tones of the low, middle and high registers. I like to feel the length of my airstream, concentrating on the ends of final notes. I start low and slow and might move further up the register using a combination of scale and arpeggios patterns. Out of my bag of tricks, here are a few more favorites: 
  • Singing before playing, or even singing WHILE playing to help open the throat.
  • Overtone exercises are excellent alarm clocks for the embouchure; I do these both slurred and tongued but slurring trains my lips to move from low to high and back again.
  • My messa di voce practice is done in a few different ways: of course, the standard movement from soft to loud and back again on long tones, both good and ‘bad’.
  • I also like to add an element of pitch bending to train the muscles around the standard embouchure to bring the pitch as far down as possible. If I can manage to get the tone down a whole step, I know I’m feeling pretty fit! Bringing the pitch back up is where the real fun begins, helping to strengthen the entire upper lip which is needed to not only adjust pitch but also keep us flexible while jumping from one register to the other.
After all that fun tone work, I wake up the tongue with a few articulation patterns. Sometimes, the music waiting for me on the music stand starts to play a role in which patterns I’ll use. As a native English and developing Dutch speaker, I’m working with various patterns of t and d but also find it rewarding to return to Hotteterre’s ‘tu-ru ’ and Quantz’s  ‘did’ll-did’ll ’.
Do you have a specific structure for warm-up and practice sessions?​
Indeed, the warm-up and the practice itself are a bit one and the same, they easily blend into each other. As I mentioned before, a good chunk of time is dedicated to a bit of improvisation to help me get connected to whichever instrument I’m using at the moment. I’ve noticed that I’m the kind of person who collects certain musical ideas throughout the day, storing them for later. This time at the beginning of my practice session is a good moment to sort of flush out any lingering ideas which haven’t had the chance to come out yet. It’s like a very satisfying way of ‘taking out the trash’ or ‘doing the wash’ before I can dedicate some time to someone else’s music. I’m not trying to create the most earth-shattering melodies ever written but I do try to approach this time as a composer might, thinking thematically and using various technical building blocks to get there.
Any distinctive characteristics of baroque flute daily practice vs. modern flute or other instruments?​
From my classical music training on the Boehm system flute, I have plenty of ingrained progressive exercises and etudes etched into my memory. Whereas exercising for the sake of exercising seemed to be the fate of my modern studies, I take much more time now to prepare this exercise work in my own way. For me now it is very much based on what the music is demanding and asking for and specifically, in which tonalities I am existing in (and visiting) throughout a given work. The music itself is filled with nuggets of wisdom for extra exercises. You just have to know where to look or perhaps, have a skilled teacher to help you spot them.
What are the key elements and unmissable points of daily practice?​
Bringing an awareness of where I’m at on any given day and how I can use that to explore the music. Having a willingness to go where the difficulty lies and not fall into the all too easy trap of playing through pieces for comfort’s sake. The best advice I ever got about the traverso came at the very beginning: the best teacher you’ll ever have will be the instrument itself. So each time I take the flute, I try to stay open to what it still has to teach me.
How long and distributed should warm-up and practice be?
Honestly, on some days you’ll want to linger longer in the warm-up zone (If you should have the luxury of time, do stay!) and on others, you’ll be feeling hasty and want to jump straight into your Bach Partita after an A minor arpeggio. Only advice would be to give yourself plenty of time to explore all avenues. Go with the flow!
Any  specific tip to address difficult technical passages during daily practice?
Yes, too many! 😊 But let me narrow it down to…
One thing which I’ve found helps my students is to ‘extend the limits’ of their perceived ability. For example, a student is struggling with an e minor arpeggio which finishes on a high E. The tone color and tuning on that high E is just not to her liking, it feels pushed and undefined. I can see that she’s got her entire attention focused on that high E. So I ask her to add one more step to that arpeggio; instead of finishing on high E, go one move further and finish on high G. Her attention has shifted to an even higher (albeit perhaps friendlier) pitch, bringing the range of her embouchure’s capability a third higher and shifting the focus away from the ‘problem area.’ The high E is no longer the ‘highest’ note (or goal) in her temporary perception, as she has just proven to herself that she can go even further. In my own practice, and I hope in that of my students, I’ve noticed that working in this way helps to build mental resilience to the challenges we face.
Are there any tools that are particularly useful for practicing?
I like to use all the typical practice aids, such as a tuner, a metronome, or a sound recorder, but in the most unconventional ways possible…
For example, a metronome can be used on the OFF-beat as opposed to the ON-beat. There are even apps out there these days which ‘randomize’ the beats (Time Guru, not sponsored!). Say you want to play in 4/4 time; the program will start you off with a few bars of 4/4 but then randomly take some beats AWAY! This has been proven to help strengthen the independence needed to sustain rhythm and not simply synchronize with the beat itself.
Any other general advice, suggestion, tip?
I cannot stress enough how valuable and teachable performance can be for developing flutists. In my studio we perform for each other twice a year and through that process it’s such a joy to watch people pair off and start to form duos and trios. When the focus of practice is shifted to preparation for a performance, a certain energy is created. Just the simple prompt of knowing that you will share your work with others enhances your awareness and while it can be very confronting for us, it is absolutely one of the best motivators to developing technique.
Pressing the record button on our phones can have a similar effect on us - all of a sudden we can become quite critical of ourselves. Recording ourselves and performing for others gives us a chance to practice a constructive inner dialogue to help us not just survive but THRIVE while performing! Performance is after all a skill of its own: it just needs to be practiced, each time improving some aspects while identifying new challenges along the way. This is often where we can have quite the laugh: the more you become aware of certain aspects of your playing, the more you will start to demand of yourself.
How do you advise your students as far as structuring their daily practice?
Do as I say, not as I do! :)
I can appreciate that my individual approach to structuring practice and warm-up is specific to me. And I remind my own students that there are as many ways to organize your practice sessions as there are individuals to play them. Sometimes, it can be quite inspirational to hear about how another person is spending their time, but it may not be the exact right combination for someone else. That’s why the practice needs to be tailor-made to the individual, based on what they like spending time doing and of course specific exercises which will help improve their technique. Because each student is coming from a different background, I don’t find it preferable to assign the same tasks to absolutely everyone. I see this as my job as their teacher, to listen to what they need at any given time within their process.
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Do you suggest or teach a warm-up routine?
I like to remind my students that each session is like starting anew. It’s a valuable moment to start slowly and build up the relationship with the instrument.​
Are there any specific pieces particularly beneficial to be played regularly in daily practice?​
I would encourage students to keep the repertoire varied, seeking more and more challenging music. We’ve all been at the point with a piece of music where we just feel we are not going anywhere with it anymore. Put it on your repertoire shelf and visit it again in a half year’s time. There is something to be said about the value of good fermentation; sometimes you just need to give it some rest and not stare directly at the problems. You’d be surprised by how much can evolve when you shift your attention to something new.