Edwina Smith
Edwina studied Music at the University of York, after having received the Principal’s Prize for Junior Music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. During her second year at university, she also gained an external diploma in performance from the Royal Academy of Music (LRAM). Edwina graduated from York in 1981 with a First, the final degree of this class to be awarded by Wilfrid Mellers (the founding professor of the York Music Department). Inspired in particular by her university supervisor, the clarinettist Alan Hacker, Edwina has subsequently pursued a career combining a wide-ranging performance repertoire with the study of historical instruments.
Edwina plays principal flute with Yorkshire Baroque Soloists, the 18th Century Sinfonia and Newcastle Baroque. She also performs with the English Haydn Orchestra, Manchester Baroque, Baroque in the North and the Merlin Ensemble, and features on the recording of Telemann’s complete ‘Tafelmusik’ by the Orchestra of the Golden Age (Naxos). Together with many other York alumni, Edwina can be heard on recordings by Yorkshire Baroque Soloists of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, St John Passion, and the early version of his St Matthew Passion (Signum). On the modern flute, she is a freelance solo, chamber and orchestral flautist, performing with the Orchestra d’Amici and the Late Music Ensemble. Edwina has recorded for BBC radio and television on baroque, nineteenth-century and modern flutes, and has commissioned and performed several contemporary works for baroque flute.
Since 2020, Edwina has also been an associate lecturer at the University of York, teaching on the MA in Music Education: Instrumental and Vocal Teaching pathway. As a member of the University of York’s Music Education Forum, she contributed to four chapters in their recently-published book (2026), Instrumental Music Education: Developing Pedagogies as Instrumental Teachers: Elizabeth Haddon: Bloomsbury Academic - Bloomsbury
In addition to teaching modern and baroque flute at the University of York, Edwina provides specialist baroque tuition and advice for occasional students from other universities in the North of England, and from 2021-2023 she was the external woodwind recital examiner for the University of Huddersfield.
Alongside her performing and teaching, Edwina is the flute consultant for the University of Edinburgh Musical Instrument Collection. She has catalogued nearly 300 flutes held by this collection, revised and enlarged their catalogue of recorders and flageolets, and recorded performances demonstrating and describing a number of these instruments (Musical Instrument Collection | Library | Library.) In addition, she has catalogued over a hundred flutes and flageolets in the John Webb Collection at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (Archives and Collections | Royal Conservatoire of Scotland; catalogue published 2025).
Together with Dr Derek McCulloch, Edwina has published an edition of Haydn’s trios for two flutes and cello (Corda Music), incorporating variants found in early nineteenth century sources. She contributed an article on this edition to the Haydn Society Journal, and has recorded two of the trios with the Café Mozart ensemble as part of a programme of works by Haydn and the Earl of Abingdon (Naxos).
