Elizabeth Downing

Flutist Elizabeth Downing is a soloist, chamber musician and faculty at the University of Maine School of Performing Arts where she teaches flute, flute pedagogy, majoring in music, and coaches chamber music.  She received a Bachelor of Music in Flute Performance and a Bachelor of Arts in German from the University of Maine and studied at the Mozarteum Conservatory of Performing Arts and the University of Salzburg in Austria. She received a Master of Music degree in Flute Performance at the University of Colorado.  Additional studies include graduate work in Higher Education and flute studies with Claude Monteux, Thomas Nyfenger, Karen Yonovitz, David Whiteside, Helmut Zangerle, Susan Heath, Richard Jacobs, Merilee Popham and masterclasses with Sir James Galway, Shaul Ben-Meir, and Geoffrey Gilbert. Elizabeth has been the director of master classes for Julius Baker, Robert Dick and Carol Wincenc and has taught at the University of Colorado, Maine Summer Youth Music, the Northern Conservatory of Music, RDL Strings and at The Boulder Center for New Musical Directions.

She has performed as a soloist with members of the New York Philharmonic in the Arcady Music Festival Orchestra, with the Leningrad Chamber Orchestra, with the Haydn Festival Orchestra under Claude Monteux, on “Morning Pro Musica”, WGBH in Boston, on Maine Public Broadcasting, in the Bangor Symphony, on the  “Lemonwheel” concert tour of the band PHISH, at the International Clarinet Festival in Belgium,  at the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies in Athens, Greece, with the Windwood Trio, Highland Chamber Ensemble, Trio Camerata, Pastorale Winds, Cadenzato, the Winds of the Bejeweled Diadem and she performs with Emmy award winning performer Paul Sullivan. For many years Elizabeth organized the Arcady Music Youth Competitions and has served as an adjudicator for music festivals and competitions throughout New England.

In addition, she has served on the boards of the UMaine Alumni Association, American Folk Festival, the UMaine Patrons of the Arts, the Arcady Music Festival, the Melmac Education Foundation, and the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. She is a member of Pi Kappa Lambda, Delta Phi Alpha and enjoys honorary memberships in the UMaine Class of 1944, All Maine Women, the Golden Key Society and is the recipient of the Vincent Hartgen, Stephen R. Gould, and McGillicuddy Humanities Center Awards from the University of Maine. Together with Doug Hall ’86 she helped create the Innovation Engineering Program and taught the first classes at the Foster Center for Student Innovation at UMaine. She is the advisor to the UMaine Tennis Club, Mainely Voices, and the UMaine Flute Ensemble. At the University of Maine, her grandfather was a founding father of Alpha Gamma Rho, and she has over thirty-five family members as graduates of the University of Maine.  She lives in Brewer, Maine with her husband, Dr. Dennis K. Cox, Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Maine, where he served as Director of Choral Activities and conductor of the University Singers.