Flute Day spotlights talent

The Spring Flute Day will display the musical and instructional talents of UT students.

For the last 14 years, Shelley Binder, associate professor in music, has created a way for students to display their skills.

“It’s an opportunity for me to see the students that are products of my students,” she said. “They have been working very hard throughout the year, and it’s a way for them to perform in front of a large crowd and show their talents.”

Spring Flute Day has become a kind of UT music tradition and on Sunday the event will showcase the musical talents of 13 of Binder’s students.

“I’ve been doing (the event) once every semester ever since I started teaching,” Binder said. “It’s just a way for me to interact with the students that I work with and see the progress that they have made.”

This is many of the students’ first opportunity to perform, and the Spring Flute Day has become quite an attraction in recent years.

Binder came to UT in 1994, and as a way for her to feel more connected to her students, she encouraged them to pick students of their own and then display their work in front of a crowd.

“It started out as another demented idea of mine,” Binder said, jokingly, “but now it has turned into a way for me to teach my students to interact with students of their own. It gives them their first opportunity to perform and participate in a large event like this one.”

All UT professors are encouraged to do some kind of community service to give back to Knoxville, and the Spring Flute Day has fulfilled that requirement for Binder. She said she enjoys doing it as well.

“This has been something that started out relatively small but now has gotten to be a pretty major event and turned into more than just community service for me,” Binder said. “I do volunteer my time with this, but I don’t see it as a hassle at all.”

The event has become a way for Binder to keep up with how her students are growing, both in the way of teaching and through performance.

Past flute days have brought in some famous UT personalities, as well.

“We had Bruce Pearl come to one of our events,” Binder said. “His daughter was a student of one of my students so he came out to the show. It’s quite flattering to see the attention that my students are getting from this event.”

The Spring Flute Day will take place Sunday at 4 p.m. in room 32 of the Alumni Memorial Building.