Erin Huelskamp

Energetic, hardworking and enigmatic, Erin Huelskamp enthralls audiences as a flutist, stage and music director, and composer. Musically, her styles and preferences vary wildly; she will readily perform and promote popular and jazz tunes alongside classical and high-art favorites. In essence, if there is a place and opportunity to make music, Huelskamp will explore it. Currently serving as Artistic Director of Encore Opera Huntsville and Orchestra Director for Asbury Church in Madison, Alabama, Huelskamp regularly performs in the greater Huntsville area on flute. With extensive experience as a composer, arranger, and engraver, she creates dramatic and comical music that often reflects a philosophical twist on her daily experiences.

Co-founder and executive director emeritus of the Juventas New Music Ensemble, Huelskamp voraciously promotes new music – especially by amazing unknown composers – and she strives to draw ever new audiences to the burgeoning sounds of the 21st century. Marked by Chamber Music Today as “the only realistic response to the the state of affairs in this country,” Huelskamp combines entrepreneurship and music to motivate change.

Huelskamp’s compositions elicit numerous awards and performances. Noted as “startling revelatory” and “electrifying”, recent compositions include Soul Travel for SATB chorus and commissioned by the Huntsville Master Chorale, Swing Low Sweet Chariot for Asbury Church, Shall We Gather At The River for the Asbury Percussion Ensemble, and continued work on her second opera The Ten-Block Walk. Former accolades include the Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Prize, special recognition from the New York Youth Symphony First Music 23, and third place at the Music Teachers National Association Student Composition Competition. Huelskamp has the privilege of performances both nationally and internationally, including such venues as L’Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, France, Studzinski Recital Hall at Bowdoin College in Maine, the Interlochen Acadamy of the Arts in Michigan, Bard University in New York, the University of Missouri-Columbia, Harvard University, and many more.

Shortly after the completion of her first opera The Year of the Serpent, Huelskamp delved into directing theatrical works. Her production of Light and Power with Juventas won the American Prize in opera as well as second place in the Professional Division of the National Opera Association’s video competition. Little Women with the Wakefield Reportory Theatre won a DASH award for Best Actress, and I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change with the TCAN Players was nominated for a DASH award for Best Ensemble. Her setting of Der Zwerg with OperaHub took special notice in The Boston Globe. Additional, favorite directing credits include Candide with Harvard University’s Lowell House Opera, Aida The Musical, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Legally Blonde The Musical with the Performing Arts Connection, Company with the TCAN Players, The Music Man with the Winthrop Playmakers, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown with Beyond the Fourth Wall, The Magic Mirror with Juventas and serving as Assistant Stage Director for The Two Gentlemen of Verona the Shakespeare on the Common production with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company.

Trained as a classical dancer for 16 years, Huelskamp began composing at the age of ten with no musical training. In 2000 she pursued studies in music at the University of Missouri-Columbia where she earned a Bachelor of Music in both composition and flute performance; she studied composition with Thomas McKenney and Stefan Freund and flute with Steven Geibel. In 2007, Huelskamp completed a Master of Music in Composition from the Boston Conservatory, where she studied with Andy Vores, Dana Brayton, and later Ken Ueno. She studied acting with Bobbie Steinbach.

Huelskamp maintains a private teaching studio in Madison, Alabama where she currently resides. Former notable teaching roles include serving as a certified teacher at the Performing Arts Connection in Sudbury, visiting lecture presentations at The Boston Conservatory, Bentley University, and the University of South Florida, and teaching several years as a professor of music theory at Boston College.