“ . . . Christine Lynn Bailey’s flute solo [in Ravel’s Daphins et Chloe] is one of the
sweetest and most touching ever captured on records.”
(American Record Guide, July/August 2003)
Buffalo native Christine Bailey Davis has been the principal flutist of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra since June, 1995, winning the job at age 21. Ms. Davis has been performing around the Buffalo area as a soloist and ensemble player since she was eleven years old. After soloing with the BPO on two daytime youth concerts in 1990, she made her professional debut in 1992, at age 18, soloing with the New York City chamber orchestra Philharmonia Virtuosi at Artpark, in Lewiston, NY. She has been a frequent soloist with Ars Nova Musicians Chamber Orchestra, as part of their Viva Vivaldi Festival and Red Jacket concert series. After two performances of Carl Nielsen’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra with the Buffalo Philharmonic in 1997, the Buffalo News called her playing “immaculately accurate, but with a winning, casual, often jaunty approach to phrasing, while extremely complex runs and ornamentations seemed artlessly simple, beguiling sculptures of sound.” In 2010, when Bailey Davis performed Lowell Liebermann’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, the Buffalo News said “Bailey Davis maintained a calm, dreamy tone, as if letting the music play itself. . . The last movement was so stunning and ended with such a bang that, again, people stood and cheered.”
Ms. Davis performed the world premiere of a new flute concerto entitled Tracing Mississippi with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in 2002 on the orchestra’s New Attitudes Series. The work, which Ms. Bailey commissioned from American Indian composer Jerod Tate, takes its audience on a musical journey through Chickasaw heritage. The piece, as well as the performance, were so successful that they were named by the Buffalo News in its list of top ten concerts of 2002. In 2007, Christine traveled to San Francisco and recorded the concerto for the Thunderbird Records label in Davies Symphony Hall with the San Francisco Symphony, under the baton of Edwin Outwater.
Ms. Davis can also be heard on more than forty studio and live recordings as principal flutist of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, as soloist with Ars Nova Musicians Chamber Orchestra, as well as on Performance Today broadcasts around the world.
Ms. Davis has dedicated herself to educating the next generation of flutists in her private studio. Her students have been accepted into music programs at Aaron Copland School of Music, Boston University, Cleveland Institute of Music, Manhattan School of Music, Mannes School of Music, McGill University, New England Conservatory, Northwestern University, and University of Minnesota. They play professionally and semi-professionally around the Buffalo area, Northern Pennsylvania, Ohio and beyond.
Christine’s missions in teaching are to arm her students with solid technique and a thorough understanding of sound production on the flute, as well as teach effective audition and competition
preparation, orchestral etiquette, problem-solving, stress management, time management, and dealing with conflict. To this end, she authored and published The No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming a
Professional Flutist, available on amazon.com and at Flute World.
Bailey Davis is a 1997 graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she was a student of Philadelphia Orchestra flutist Jeffrey Khaner and Cleveland Orchestra flutists Joshua Smith, Martha Aarons, and Mary Kay Fink. She has also studied with Marina Piccinini, Carol Wincenc, and James Galway. Her greatest pedagogical influence is Keith Underwood, to whom The No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming a Professional Flutist is dedicated.