Felix's bio from Megan Lyden's dissertation

The following article was sent by Megan Lyden and was part of her DMA dissertation on the history of the Soni Ventorum Quintet, of which Felix was a member. Felix was Megan's advisor for this project. This bio was written in 2000.

Felix Skowronek, Flute
Flutist Felix Skowronek is one of the founding members of the Soni Ventorum Wind Quintet. A native of Seattle, Skowronek studied flute with Frank Horsfall until his high school graduation in 1952; subsequently, he studied flute at the Curtis Institute of Music with William Kincaid. Upon graduation from Curtis with a B.M. degree in flute performance, Skowronek returned to Seattle to serve as principal flutist with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra for the 1956-57 season. Drafted into the U.S. Army, Skowronek left Seattle and played principal flute with the U.S. Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra in Germany for two seasons (1957-59). During his years with the Seventh Army Symphony, Skowronek was a founding member of the Seventh Army Symphony Wind Quintet. After completing military service, Skowronek again returned to the Seattle Symphony as principal flutist for the 1959-60 season.

In 1960 Skowronek accepted a position as the first instructor of flute at the newly founded Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. During the six years he was in Puerto Rico, Skowronek served as principal flute with the Puerto Rico Symphony, performed as a member of the Casals Festival Orchestra and, with his fellow faculty members, formed the Soni Ventorum Wind Quintet.

In 1966 Skowronek left Puerto Rico to serve as principal flutist with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra for two years. In 1968 he rejoined the Soni Ventorum Wind Quintet when the ensemble became the quintet-in-residence at the University of Washington School of Music. He is currently professor of flute at the University of Washington. In addition to teaching flute at the University of Washington, Skowronek has held several posts at the School of Music, including chairman of the School of Music concerts committee and head of the orchestral instruments division. In July 1994 Skowronek was appointed as the School of Music’s associate director for performance and public affairs, a post he occupied for two years.

In addition to his work at the University of Washington, Skowronek has been an instructor and ensemble coach for the National Youth Orchestra of Canada in Toronto and Vancouver, Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta and Marrowstone Music Festival in Washington State. For many years he has been a sectional coach for the Seattle Youth Symphony Organization. He also serves as music director for Belle Arte Concerts, a professional chamber music series in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue.

Active in the National Flute Association, Skowronek has been a member of its board of directors. In 1982 he was program chairman for the NFA’s tenth anniversary convention, which was held in Seattle and from 1985 through 1986 he served as the organization’s president. On the local level, Skowronek was founding president of the Seattle Flute Society (1979-82) and has held numerous board positions with that organization as well.
An active musician, Skowronek has appeared numerous times as a lecturer, panelist and performer at annual conventions of the National Flute Association. He has released a solo recording (with harpsichordist Martha Goldstein) of the Methodical Sonatas 1-6 of Georg Philipp Telemann, and for several years fronted his own combo, the FS Jazz Trio in the Seattle area. In addition, he served as principal flutist for three summer seasons of the Seattle Opera’s monumental productions of Wagner’s Ring cycle.

Skowronek has been recognized as a leading force in the revival of the wooden Boehm-system flute in the United States. His thirty years of recorded concerts at the University of Washington as well as some two dozen commercial recordings with the Soni Ventorum constitute an unparalleled archive of modern wooden-flute performance. Through his research, he has become an authority on the use of new foreign and domestic timbers, particularly Australian hardwoods, for the manufacture of musical instruments. Working in association with the Western Australia Department of Conservation and Land Management, Skowronek has collected samples of over fifty species of eucalypts, acacias, casuarinas and other exotic hardwoods, most of them indigenous to the area. His experimental head joints made from these are being tested in such countries as Argentina, Australia, Canada, Cuba, Great Britain, Russia and the United States and are prevalent in the Seattle area where they can be heard regularly in public performances by Skowronek and selected students. Skowronek has presented his findings in conferences in the United States and Australia and his collaboration with piccolo maker Eldred Spell and flutemakers Alexander Eppler, Robert Bigio and the Verne Q. Powell Company has led to commercial applications of his researched timbers.