My relationship with baroque flute has always been led by my desire for insight into the music. At music college I became the (Boehm) flute player in a trio with harpsichord and cello. As young musicians we rejected the hand-me-down interpretations we were taught and learnt from historical performance sources. However, for several years I wasn’t interested in the baroque flute - I’d read an authority on historical wind instruments, who stated it was fit only for firewood. I learnt not to trust “authorities”, when by chance I met someone who lent me a late 18th century flute. As a result, I changed my mind and began teaching myself from primary sources practicing on flutes from a historical wind instrument collection made by the very same authority - Adam Carse - who had put me off the instrument for so long!
The first thing you do when you pick up your traverso to start the practice day, and why?
Practice sessions always begin with thought, a consideration of what I’m working on and, in relation to that, at what particular point I’m “at this particular moment”. I aim always to maintain a responsive rather than a fixed warm-up and practice regime.
Any recurring piece to play every day, and why?​
If I am going for a general purpose I might use an exercise sequence from the Grands Exercises Journaliers in the Taffanel and Gaubert flute method, or to an exercise from Mathilde Marchesi Theoretical and Practical Vocal Method. Other fundamental exercises include chromatic scales using both sharp and flat fingerings; scales of trills; arpeggio sequences played from figured bass lines.
Do you have a daily routine?​
How I proceed after my initial warm-up depends on how the warm-up went and on the music I’m currently working on. But at the moment I am doing exercises specifically for flexibility and dynamics. 
After warm-up, fundamental exercises include chromatic scales using both sharp and flat fingerings; scales of trills; arpeggio sequences played from figured bass lines. Unless an exercise is very long I usually play it through in all keys. When I work with trills I practice with a fixed number of finger beats. And whatever exercise I’m doing I usually work on one octave only at a time in every key rather than covering two and a half octaves for each key. It’s an approach I acquired early on when working from vocal method books as sources of ideas and approach to developing techniques for playing the Baroque flute as opposed to the Boehm flute. Also I have a strong natural tendency to over-favour the upper registers to the detriment of the first register. However, that does not mean I neglect the upper register and I practice both in my fingering-only exercises.
I then move on to material specifically related to whatever my current focus is. So at the moment I’m focused on expressive (typically word-based) breathing and dynamics. With this aim I’m exploring the expressive-dynamic shaping of ornaments, phrases and individual notes and on specifically-related exercises and pieces. My principal sources for study and exercise are from works by Geminiani, Quantz and the late 18th Century singer and pedagogue, Domenico Corri. From Quantz’ Versuch I am working from Chapters 13 and 14 on the performance “Of extempore variations on Simple Intervals”, and “Of the manner of Playing the Adagio”. From Geminiani my sources are The Art of Playing on the Violin, A Treatise on Good Taste in the Art of Music, and Rules for playing in a true taste. Each of them contains very explicit examples and performance instructions on ornamentation, plus pieces and songs with detailed dynamics. Finally there are the exercises, solfeggi and songs in the first and second volumes of Domenico Corri’s Singer's Preceptor, which - except for the solfeggi - contain detailed annotations for breathing and dynamics in relation to word meaning.
In addition, two specifically flute sources I’m using are Blavet and Atys. Blavet’s three Recueil de pieces - particularly the Premier Recueil - present some excellent examples of expressive breathing, as also do some movements of his Sonates Oeuvre 2.  Atys annotates breathing places and phrasing in the form of grammatical punctuation and dynamics in his two extant works Clef Facile et Méthodique and the Six Sonates en Duo.
What kind of goals do you set for your practice?​
My goal is the ability to play in a way that I believe best expresses the music and gives me emotional, intellectual and physical pleasure in doing so - this is the most important objective for me now and which I’m afraid I lost sight of for far too long and far too often during my career. 
To gain a broader overall insight into performance possibilities I practice transposing much of the above material - ornaments, phrases, etc. - into all keys. Depending on the key, it gives me different perspectives on the same musical material and helps me to develop expressive approaches that technical solutions alone don’t offer. Also, because the sources I have to draw on are quite limited, practicing them repetitively exactly as they are on the page would rapidly lead to habituation, boredom and a dead end. At one and the same time I’m trying to feel/understand totally different (and to me, alien) concepts of expressive dynamics and breathing, while trying to develop the musical means to that concept.
Do you do any systematic warm-up?
My warm-up has a basic form: physically - fingers, lips, etc; mentally - observing, directing and reflecting on my warm-up; and musically - why am I doing what I’m doing? Importantly the greater pleasure and interest I take in warming up the more I remain focused and alert, and (hopefully) the more productive I’ll be during that session. Habit, routine, for me are killers. 
Time-permitting, I warm up successively with fingers and breath flow which includes throat and mouth shape, jaw and tongue position, and lips. Starting with fingers I first exercise individual single finger movements - ie. closed-open-closed hole, closed-open, open-closed and open-closed-open - in sequences drawing mainly on my ecosonics; and then work with standard note fingering combinations. 
I then move on to breath flow and embouchure related exercises which consist of a mixture of my own ideas and adaptations from a variety of other historical-to-contemporary, instrumental and vocal sources.
Do you have a specific structure for warm-up and practice sessions?​
I have a set of parameters for routines rather than an unvarying system. I only maintain a particular routine for a while until I feel the constituents are no longer usefully serving their purpose because they are becoming too routine, or I need to develop a new approach to fit a different purpose. And every day is slightly different - I change, physically, mentally, emotionally - the music I’m playing and what I’m trying to understand or express changes - and I need to take those changes into account and work with them. Routines that are too routine, that become merely habit, inevitably blunt awareness and defeat the very purpose of them. Also they can become a crutch - one can become over-dependent on them. 
On this and, in fact, on this question and nearly all aspects of flute practice routine and playing, you can’t do better than to read Michel Debost’s excellent book The Simple Flute. For example: “Monotony creates boredom, which, more than difficulty, is an obstacle to concentration”. Debost’s book is a wonderful resource - wise, generous, intelligent, and with music always at the forefront. Although it wasn’t written for the baroque player, the information can always be adapted, or simply taken as a principle; and there are relatively few places where it does not apply at all to what we do.  
Any distinctive characteristics of baroque flute daily practice vs. modern flute or other instruments?​
For me the answer depends on a number of different things … on the player, their background, their strengths and weaknesses. And even more crucially, what motivates you to play the baroque flute? on what you are aiming to achieve? It’s easy to forget that practice techniques aren’t created in abstract, but are developed to address the particular stylistic and technical demands of each era, the preferred performance styles of different countries, whether for professionals or amateurs, and so on. Practice techniques change with time and place, as illustrated in historical vocal, instrumental and dance method books. This is made particularly apparent when looking at instrumental and vocal methods, instructions and exercises from say, the late 17th century to the present day. 

I don’t oppose baroque flute daily practice to contemporary flute practice. Rather I approach the historical changes from early methods up to the present as a continuum - a fabulous mine of information open to exploration, which can be either interpreted and used exactly as we understand it, or adapted, or simply as inspiration. For example, much mainstream contemporary practice has been developed by great players and teachers, and it can provide a continuously inspiring and very fruitful source of models. The sheer variety of different approaches provide examples that can easily be modified by the baroque player or used as concepts for approaches to methodical technical development. But of course, there are aspects of baroque performance that late 18th to 21st century sources don’t touch on, that can only be accessed from contemporaneous Baroque sources. I also use vocal exercises - singers have to build the range and facility of their voices more methodically than instrumentalists building their techniques. Historical vocal methods particularly are often more specific and detailed about performance and exercising of tone, passage work and ornamentation.  
What are the key elements and unmissable points of daily practice?​
First: bad practice develops into bad playing just as surely as good practice develops into good playing. For example, practicing a difficult fast passage slowly make sure that your finger movements are relaxed and free, and that you are memorising the passage - not staring at the score like a hypnotised rabbit staring at a car’s headlights.
Second: when practicing you’re working to develop or to change, your innate tendencies - your musical and physical abilities and your personality (emotional make-up, etc). You are, so to speak, like captain, crew and ship all in one. As captain, the more responsibly you command your crew and navigate your ship the more productive and pleasurable your voyage should be. 
Third: throughout your practice session remain fully engaged and alert - the disadvantage of methodical practice is that can be all too easy to waste an awful lot of time repeating what doesn’t need to be repeated.
How long and distributed should warm-up and practice be?
This depends on the amount of the time you have available and your technical and musical requirements as a player. Unless you have no choice (eg. too much to learn), don’t practice to the point where you’re running on autopilot, no longer fully aware, thoughtful or self-observant. A short practice time spent fully engaged and alert and focused on practicing what you need to practice rather spending equal or more amounts of time, on what you can already do will be far more productive. It might be three hours plus or a mere ten minutes.
Any  specific tip to address difficult technical passages during daily practice?
It is essential to be musically and intellectually alert, pay attention, examine what you’re doing, ask yourself questions. Shine the searchlight of your attention on all aspects of your playing - the physical components, the mental, the emotional, the temperamental, the intellectual. What are you aiming for musically? Questions you can ask yourself when working with a problematic passage: “Am I practicing without tension?” “Am I repeating and consequently habituating the very problems that I’m practicing to eliminate?” “Is this difficult because it’s new to me or do I in fact have the technique to play it but somehow I keep going wrong?” “Am I going wrong because I’m tensing up just before the difficult moment - if so where? at what point is the tension happening?” A common problem is caused by being very familiar with the notes when reading them from the score but never really knowing them: “Do I really know the music, can I play this passage from memory - even slowly?”  If the answer is no, then you need to memorise. Don’t worry if your memory isn’t great - be kind to yourself - go about the process methodically, slowly and gently. Just aim to reach the point where reading the notes becomes a reminder of what you have memorised.
It is also vital to separate the pure mechanics of technical practice from musical practice. And conversely strive not to divorce technique from its expressive purpose.  For example, with ornamentation don’t just keep repeating an ornament or an ornamented phrase as written without being able to play the plain notes expressively without the ornaments. The purpose of ornamentation is to enhance the expression, not to cover up a lack of understanding, or to hide the fact that you think the music is boring without ornamentation. Telemann has given us perfect material for developing this way of working in the first movements of his twelve Sonate Metodiche.
Are there any tools that are particularly useful for practicing?
A tuner, a metronome, an audio recorder, can all be useful as long as you remain alert to their limitations and dangers. The great advantage of a mirror is that we can objectively see problems much more easily than we can feel them. A good sound recorder can be useful if not overused as however good it is it can both hide some problems and exaggerate others. In my experience the metronome is potentially a very counter-productive tool. Schooling oneself to play at a metrically exact tempo teaches nothing about musical playing. However, if, in addition to individual note-by-note beats the metronome includes hierarchical grouping by measure and measure sub-divisions, then it can teach you about rhythm and pulse.
Any other general advice, suggestion, tip?
I can’t overemphasise the importance of self-observation and reflection in all aspects of music making. Expert teaching can turn us into very accomplished players but it won’t  necessarily make us better musicians. 
Of all things, at whatever stage you’re at, however good or bad you are (or feel you are), whether you’re an amateur or a music student (or a professional?) there is one essential question you should ask yourself: why am I doing this? is it just for the pleasure - because I love playing music? the baroque flute? I want to be famous? the best? There are many possible questions and they may have very simple or complex answers. If you know what really matters to you, why you’re playing the baroque flute, then you should have a much clearer idea of how and what to practice, how and what to learn, what kind of teacher you want (if at all). And particularly if you’re a student you could ask yourself whether becoming a professional musician is going to give you what you wanted when you started playing or whether you would get greater satisfaction out of being a supremely accomplished amateur.
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How do you advise your students as far as structuring their daily practice?
In my opinion, practice structures, materials, regimes, etc., should be as specific to the individual student’s needs as possible.  I do not advocate a generalised approach, one that is abstractly constructed at or simply imposed by a teacher. Abstract technical development is a very “classical” concept in the performance arts. It gives classical musicians and ballet dancers a supreme overall technique for the highest standards of performance of a very wide range of the kind of repertoire that largely employs a conventional vocabulary. When it comes to applying it to period performance it’s helpful to keep in mind that this is an industrial approach to a pre-industrial instruments and their music.
Do you suggest or teach a warm-up routine?
A complete warm-up would in my opinion include fingers, embouchure, tone production, scales, arpeggios, ornamentation - particularly trills. However, I would emphasise “would” include not “should” - as what might be a necessity for some players might simply be a desirable option for others. 
Are there any specific pieces particularly beneficial to be played regularly in daily practice?
It is possible to utilise almost any material as useful exercise or study. There are examples of using phrases from repertoire as exercises - Walfred Kujala’s The Flutists Vade Mecum, Karl Lenski’s 18 Cells for Flute, the excellent books by Philippe Bernold, to name a few. 
I recommend using transposing. Transposition is always valuable in itself, it’s a useful discipline, it’s always at your finger tips, and it has a good historical pedigree. 
From Chapter 15 of Corette’s Méthode  we are shown, albeit very briefly, an 18th Century flute player’s approach to playing chords and, taking a movement from one of Corelli’s Op. 5 sonatas, how to transcribe violin music. Quantz’ collection of Capriccios, fantasias and pieces contains not just technically advanced, but also intermediate and beginner's pieces. There are some sources which I think contain enough material which suitable for all skill levels. For example, the three books of Blavet Recueil, Quantz’ collection of Capriccios for beginners. The Quantz Solfeggi vividly demonstrate typical differences between a method book, and teaching and learning material in practice. The Solfeggi is filled with the kind of material that method books don’t have the space to include. The one thing that isn’t crystal clear however, is that it’s not always easy to tell with some passages whether Quantz is advocating a practice technique or a performance style.
Much of the French flute repertoire offers very useful and charming material suitable for all levels of accomplishment - so much of it was composed for amateurs, and charm and simplicity was one of the touchstones of such compositions. However, in my experience some players are temperamentally never at home with French music. 
In a very different way the same is true of CPE Bach - a composer whose output offers some of the finest music for the flute to players at almost all but the most elementary levels. But again Carl Philip uses a musical language that some people can never really connect with. Another very different but rewarding composer is Locatelli. His interesting, idiosyncratic music encompasses a range of difficulty, from the technically easy to the extremely demanding. Importantly Locatelli offers insights into Italianate ornamentation of slow movements and to a degree, into the rhythmic variation of fast movements.
Closing remarks
To provide a context for my answers and help explain any possible obscurities, I’ll give a brief outline of two projects I’m currently working on.

I have just begun working on a project with the eminent British composer Edward Cowie. For a number of years Edward and I have talked to me about his composing a new set of pieces for me taking the Telemann flute Fantasias as the starting point. I say as a starting point because the eventual form of the pieces and how they interact, or respond or connect with each Fantasia is very much part of our work-in-process - it is not a foregone conclusion. We aim to make a CD of the piece towards the end of this year.  It could in fact end up as a single work. In addition to the professional and personal pleasure of working with Edward, this project is giving me a great space in which to explore the Fantasias from different perspectives, one which is not solely concerned with performance. The Fantasias contain so much musical complexity in such misleadingly simple and brief form.

My other project is with the soprano, Mhairi Lawson. Mhairi is researching the publications of singer and teacher Domenico Corri (1746-1825). She is working on creating a new singers’ method, and on bringing the instructions and songs in Corri’s annotated editions from theoretical critical ideas to audio reality. My contribution is small - it’s to perform and record a few of the songs in versions for solo flute that were published contemporaneously. And this leads directly to what most interests me about Corri’s work, which is the phrasing, breathing and ornamentation that he marks in his songs is retained in the solo flute versions. I have been interested in purely expressive breathing and phrasing - as opposed to functional - since I first encountered it in Blavet’s opus 2 sonatas and his three books of collected pieces. And I long puzzled over Quantz’ statement in Chapter 7, Section 5 of the Versuch which is that you can take a breath before a long held note even if it is preceded by a short note. In both cases my questions - What does it do, why is it there, how do you perform it? - were answered by songs. In the case of Blavet, seeing the songs that he included in his collections. And in the case of Quantz in a song in the second volume of Corri’s Singer's Preceptor. And although Quantz’ breath advice is functional it can’t be followed without taking expression into account plus a performance style in which it makes musical sense. The big question for me remains - how to perform them with meaning in a way which is musically and expressively totally convincing?
Also what more generally underlies my interest is that I have always thought that dynamics, expression-phrasing are significant but neglected aspects of performance practice. It was something I tried to do early on in my career but in an extremely naive way (as did other pioneering performers) - with the result it was sometimes called the “baroque bulge”, which sadly, was an accurate description.