Carla Rees is a UK-based low flutes specialist who has developed an international reputation for her innovative work. She is Artistic Director of rarescale, an ensemble which celebrated its 10th Anniversary in 2013 with the premieres of 17 new works in 10 days. She was Programme Director for the British Flute Society International Conventions in 2012 and 2014, and currently serves as International Liaison for the National Flute Association of America, as well as being a member of their New Music Advisory and Low Flutes committees. She completed her PhD at the Royal College of Music in London in 2014, researching extended techniques for Kingma System alto and bass flute with the support of scholarships from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Royal College of Music. She is currently Programme Leader for Music at the Open College of the Arts and a Flute teacher and Honarary Research Associate at Royal Holloway University of London. Carla plays Kingma System flutes made by Eva Kingma and Bickford Brannen.

Since 2000, Carla has been working to develop recital repertoire for the alto and bass flute, and she has had several hundred works written for her by a wide range of composers from around the world, and has premiered works by composers including Claes Biehl, Dan Di Maggio, Alexander Goehr, Sungji Hong, Robert Fokkens, Daniel Kessner, Nicola LeFanu, Adam Melvin, Scott Miller, Patrick Nunn, David Bennett Thomas, Ian Wilson, Scott Wilson, Elizabeth Winters and long-term collaborative partner, Michael Oliva.

Carla performs frequently at international festivals, both with rarescale and as a soloist, including at Flute Conventions in the USA, Canada, UK, France, Slovenia and Costa Rica. She is a member of the Rees/Roche/Pestova trio with clarinettist Heather Roche and pianist Xenia Pestova, with whom she has performed recently at Bangor New Music Festival. An active chamber musician, other performance highlights have included Feldman’s For Philip Guston with John Tilbury and Simon Allen at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and the premiere of a new work by Ian Wilson at University College Cork with the RTE Vanburgh Quartet, as well as appearances with rarescale at Spitalfields Festival and Nonclassical.

Carla has recorded five discs for rarescale records, as well as for Atopos, Capstone and Metier, and appears on incidental music for film, TV and radio, including Nanny McPhee 2, and the BBC Radio 4 series Dear Professor Hawking.

Carla is Director of low flutes-specialist publishing company Tetractys. She also works as a freelance photographer and has had her work published in the UK, USA, France and New Zealand. See her photography website here