North of England Flute Choir Festival

With Guest Artists Andrea Kuypers, Mel Orriss and Carla Rees

Saturday 6 June 2026, 10am - 4pm
University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield, HD1 3DH

We’re excited to head to Huddersfield for the North of England Flute Choir Festival! It's a chance for individuals and pre-existing flute choirs to come together and take part in workshops, performances and massed flute choirs - all led by our wonderful guest artists Andrea Kuypers, Mel Orriss and Carla Rees.

Participants will perform massed flute choir repertoire, discover low flute, piccolo and C flute workshops, and take part in ensemble playing. Flute choirs will have the option of a coaching session with one of our guest artists, and the day will culminate in a performance of the various repertoire we have performed throughout the day.

With something for everyone, the day will be a great opportunity to play together and meet fellow flute players in a relaxed and informal setting.

Tickets: £35 (booking form below)
Open to players aged 16 and above

About Our Guest Artists

Andrea Kuypers

Andrea Kuypers is a performer and educator with a wealth of experience spanning more than three decades. She studied flute at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester but has spent most of her working life in Scotland where she has built a reputation as one of the foremost freelancers in the country as well as being a sought after teacher and coach. Andrea is the artistic director of Flutes Unlimited flute choir and offers a range of workshops, residential courses and private tuition.

Andrea has been fortunate enough to perform and record regularly with all the major Scottish orchestras as well as guesting further afield in London, Singapore and Tenerife. She has also worked in the pop and jazz world, most notably with Scottish band Belle and Sebastian and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. Her work has taken her all over Europe, USA, Canada, Japan and Brazil, and she has been lucky enough to share a stage with some amazing musicians including Mel Torme, George Shearing, Evanescence, Jack Jones, James Galway and Nicola Benedetti. Andrea’s TV appearances range from Songs of Praise to Later with Jools Holland.

Mel Orriss

Mel studied flute at Chetham’s School of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Peter Lloyd. She then undertook the Guildhall’s postgraduate Orchestral Training course, winning the Philip Jones Prize for orchestral playing. As a student, she was a semi-finalist in the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition and toured with the European Community Youth Orchestra.

Following an extensive and successful career as a flautist, Mel’s passion for arranging and composing led to the founding of Wonderful Winds in 2010, which quickly gained a global reputation for excellence, providing inspiring ensemble music for wind players of all levels. Its publications have won major prizes in the National Flute Association (USA) Newly Published Music competition.

Career highlights include working with the Flute Bands of Derry/Londonderry on Shaun Davey’s The Relief of Derry Symphony, which Mel arranged and conducted, and leading over 100 flautists in a massed performance of her award-winning arrangement of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin at the Just Flutes Festival 2025.

Mel continues to teach flautists of all ages and coaches flute ensembles and woodwind groups. She is the musical director of Flute Cocktail, Tavistock, and Assistant Conductor and Woodwind Coach of the Devon Youth Orchestras. She also enjoys travelling the country with the Wonderful Winds Flute Roadshow, and wearing her narrator’s hat in concerts with long-time collaborators, Festive Flutes.

Carla Rees

Carla Rees is a British flute player, composer and arranger, working to raise the profile of her instruments through performance, research and collaboration. She enjoys an international performance career both as a soloist, improviser and chamber musician; she frequently appears at international festivals and was a soloist for the National Flute Association’s Concerto Gala in Phoenix Arizona in 2023. Recent performances include in Brazil, USA and Japan as well as around the UK.

She is an established recording artist with a discography of over 30 titles, including concertos with the Royal Ballet Sinfonia and Neue Musik im Ostseeraum, as well as several world premiere recordings of works composed for her. She has also recorded for film, radio and video games. Her drive to create new repertoire has resulted in the premieres of several hundred works, many of which are now published by Tetractys Publishing.

She is Artistic Director of the contemporary chamber music ensemble rarescale, and its associated ensemble, rarescale Flute Academy. She leads flute days and masterclasses throughout the UK. She is also Artistic Director of the International Superflutes Collective, a flute ensemble which celebrates international friendship and collaboration. Carla was appointed as the first Professor of Low Flutes and Contemporary Flute at the Royal Academy of Music in September 2021 and has taught masterclasses and composer workshops at some of the world’s leading institutions, including the Juilliard School in New York and USC in Los Angeles. She is Editor of the British Flute Society’s magazine, Pan, and Commissions Coordinator for the National Flute Association of America. Carla plays Kingma System flutes, made for her by Eva Kingma, Bickford Brannen and Lev Levit. She has a PhD from the Royal College of Music in London.

We look forward to seeing you there!

If you need any more information, please contact us at events@bfs.org.uk.