Claire Chase, described by The New York Times recently as “the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and teacher. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists. She was the first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012, and in 2017 was the first flutist to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize for Classical Music from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Chase served as the Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall in the 2022-23 season and serves as the Music Director for the 2025 Ojai Music Festival.
Chase has performed as a soloist recently with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony, Munich Chamber Orchestra, and London Philharmonia. Upcoming concerto projects include the world premiere of a new duo concerto by Dai Fujikura for Chase and the violinist Patricia Kopachinskaja, which the pair will premiere with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic at the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, with subsequent performances with Ensemble Resonanz at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and on tour in Switzerland, Belgium, Turkey, and Greece. In the 2022-23 season, Chase premiered a new duo concerto by Felipe Lara with the vocalist and bassist esperanza spalding and the conductor Susanna Mälkki, which was named one of the Best Classical Music Performances of the Year by The New York Times.
In 2013, Chase launched the 24-year commissioning project Density 2036, described by The New Yorker as “a quarter-century journey with little precedent.” Now in its 12th year, Density reimagines the solo flute literature through commissions, performances, recordings, educational initiatives, and a community-focused approach to cultural production. In 2023, Chase performed all ten Density programs to date in a weeklong series of events co-produced by Carnegie Hall and The Kitchen.. Central to the Densityproject is a commitment to supporting an international, multigenerational community of flutists who will take the Density repertoire in bold new interpretive directions. The Density Fellowsprogram, launched in 2023 in celebration of the 10th anniversary, provides an international cohort of emerging flutists with the resources to make the Density repertoire their own. Chase is the artistic director of Density Arts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the flute in the 21st century.
As an undergraduate at Oberlin Conservatory, Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble, a collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators committed to creating collaborations built on equity and cultural responsiveness. She served as the ensemble’s artistic director until 2017 and as an ensemble member on performance and educational projects on five continents, developing an artist-driven organizational model that resulted in the premieres of over 1,000 new works and earned the group multiple Chamber Music America/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, the Trailblazer Award from the American Music Center, and the Ensemble of the Year Award from Musical America Worldwide.
A deeply committed educator, Chase is Professor of the Practice in the Department of Music at Harvard University, where she teaches courses on contemporary music, interdisciplinary collaboration, and cultural advocacy. Chase is also Creative Associate at The Juilliard School, where she mentors young artists and engages students in a range of interdisciplinary projects. With her longtime colleague Steven Schick, she cofounded Ensemble Evolution at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, a three-week intensive for the next generation of interdisciplinary artists, curators, and teachers. Chase’s Debs Creative Chair residency at Carnegie Hall encompassed programming for all ages, including a “Day of Listening” for children and families inspired by the listening philosophies of Pauline Oliveros. Chase will partner with the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to expand her Pauline Oliveros project as part of the PST ART x Science Collide festival in 2024-25.
Claire Chase’s extensive discography includes eight solo albums of world premiere recordings and dozens of collaborative recordings with ensembles, composers, and sound artists from a wide range of musical genres. Chase grew up in Leucadia, California, with the childhood dream of becoming a professional baseball player before she discovered the flute. She now lives in Brooklyn with her partner, the author Kirstin Valdez Quade, and their two-year-old daughter.