Flute Alumna Amelia Lyon named to Kingston Orchestra
Alumna Amelia Lyon won the audition for the Principal Flute Chair in Kingston Ontario. Amelia will replace  Donelda Gartshore, one of Carolyn Christie's former teachers.  Amelia studied at McGill with Denis Bluteau and Carolyn Christie and is an alumna of the NYO.  Born to music-loving parents in Ottawa, Ontario in 1985, Amelia has been playing the flute since the age of nine. In high school, she was an active member of the orchestra and the wind ensembles, as well as founding and participating in smaller chamber groups with other students. While in Ottawa, she studied with both Beverley Robinson, and Robert Cram.
Amelia received both an Undergraduate and a Masters degree in orchestral performance at the McGill Schulich School of Music, under the orchestral tutelage of Carolyn Christie, Denis Bluteau, and Alexis Hauser. She participated in many university ensembles including the McGill Symphony Orchestra, the Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Wind Symphony, and various wind quintets and smaller ensembles. Outside of school, Amelia spent four years as principal flute of the Ottawa Youth Orchestra, and two years playing with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, under the baton of Jacques Lacombe, and completed three summers with the National Academy Orchestra working with Boris Brott. After her completion of university, Amelia moved to Toronto and began freelancing with various ensembles in the area including Sinfonia Toronto and the Etobicoke Philharmonic.
In 2003 she won first place in both the Ottawa Youth Orchestra's and the Ottawa's Thirteen Strings concerto competitions. She has been the recipient of the Harold Crabtree Foundation Award and the Special Prize for Orchestral Excerpts in 2007 and the National Arts Centre Orchestra Bursary in 2008 from the NACO Bursary Competition. In November of 2009, she was a semi-finalist in the Montreal Symphony's Standard Life competition in winds brass and percussion.
