Faculty || Suzanne Duffy, Flute

Suzanne Duffy, Flute

Principal Flute with Opera San Luis Obispo, San Luis Obispo Master Chorale, Orchestra Novo, and Lompoc Pops, Ventura College Opera Theatre; and Second Flute/Piccolo, Opera Santa Barbara. Duffy has also performed for Palm Beach Opera, Florida Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony, and has served as guest principal flute for the San Luis Obispo Symphony and Santa Maria Philharmonic.  A former Lecturer in Flute, Cal-Poly, San Luis Obispo (2014-2025), Duffy’s students, from grammar school to retirees, have excelled in their respective spheres, successes which have included top chairs in their ensembles, concerto and scholarship competition winners, and winners in National Flute Association and other regional competitions on Long Island, NY and the Central Coast here in California. 

Duffy received flute performance degrees from Indiana University (M.M.) and Northwestern University (B.M.). In addition to post-graduate studies at SUNY-Stony Brook, she was a four-season member of the New World Symphony of Miami Beach, Florida, an orchestral fellowship training program founded by former Artistic Director and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. Other chamber music and orchestral performance study programs included the Festival Institute at Round Top (TX, two summers), the Musica Academy of the West (1983), and the American Conservatoire in Fontainebleau, France (Summer 1989).   

Her own flute studies started with Mary Louise Poor in Aurora, Illinois and progressed through Walfrid Kujala, Carol Wincenc, Peter Lloyd and Samuel Baron, and master classes with William “Wibb” Bennett (2016, 2017, Austin Peay University, TN), Geoffrey Gilbert (1988, Deland, FL), James Galway (1992, Miami Beach), and Jean Pierre Rampal (1980 at Ravinia, Highland Park, IL).