Frequent Flyer Flutist

Says Piccinini of her head joint: "That relationship has to be really special. It's the thing you kiss."

Marina Piccinini—who joined the Peabody Conservatory faculty in 2001—is in constant motion across the globe, performing in Asia and Europe, as well as all across the Americas. It's an invigorating, if sometimes grueling, schedule even when the myriad elements that go into transcontinental travel go smoothly.

About a decade ago, Piccinini was heading home from a star-studded flute gala in Munich, accompanied by her mentor from Juilliard, the late Julius Baker. As the pair passed through security in the Munich airport, Baker and his flute sailed through without a hitch.

The guards were far more interested in Piccinini's Brannen Brothers flute. "They made me open the flute case. They made me put the flute together," she recalls. "And they still, somehow, didn't truly believe it was a flute, and they wanted me to play it.

"So I said to myself, 'They want me to play? I'm going to play.'"

With that, she launched into J. S. Bach's Partita in A-minor for solo flute. "It's not very high, but it's very intense," she says. "There are lots of continued sixteenth notes without a place for breath. I closed my eyes tightly and played the whole thing. It's about six minutes long!

"When I opened my eyes, all the security guards had gathered around to listen. The terminal was quiet. They had stopped everything. And they all started clapping, they just loved it."

Though a scene like that hasn't occurred again, Piccinini says she frequently is asked to put the flute together at airports by dubious security personnel. She's even been asked to remove the cork in the head joint, which would ruin the most crucial piece of the instrument. "The personality of the flute lies in the head joint," she explains. "That relationship has to be really special. It's the thing you kiss."

Piccinini owns two nearly identical 14K gold flutes handmade in Boston by Brannen Brothers, one of the world's premier flute builders, each etched with a personalized dragon design.

With them she uses two head joints: one is only a few years old, made of platinum with gold bands around it, custom made by J.R. Lafin. The other was crafted by the legendary English maker Albert Cooper in 1982. It was loaned to her by Julius Baker for a competition while she was at Juilliard (she won; he declared, "You sound great! Keep it!").

She used the Cooper head joint for a London recital, and afterward learned that Albert Cooper was there. "I had never met him," she says, "and I went to shake his hand. All he said to me was, 'You've got a lot of bloody dents in my head joint!'

"He had sat in the back of the hall and been able to see all of the dents. He made me come to his house, and he took out every single one of them. I was reckless with it," she says. "I have been much more respectful ever since."