Meet the Faculty
linda pereksta
(920) 424-4226
perekstl@uwosh.edu
Linda Pereksta joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh as Assistant Professor of Flute in 2009. Prior to this appointment, she was on the faculty of the University of Mississippi, where she taught Flute, Aural Skills and a Liberal Arts seminar on the life and cultural influence of Beethoven. While in Mississippi, she was a member of the Mockingbird Early Music Ensemble and held the positions of Principal Flute with the Tupelo Symphony Orchestra and Piccolo with the Arkansas Symphony. Previously, she was a tenured member of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in New Orleans, where she taught Flute at Tulane University and Music History at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. During her time with the LPO, she performed in the orchestra’s joint concert with the New York Philharmonic, playing under the batons of James Conlon, Leonard Slatkin and Lorin Maazel. She can be heard with the two orchestras on the Nonesuch CD, Our New Orleans, accompanying Randy Newman.
Dr. Pereksta has been featured as a concerto soloist with Belle Meade Baroque, the Germantown Symphony Orchestra and the University of Mississippi Symphony Orchestra. Formerly a member of the Memphis and Greenville (SC) Symphony Orchestras, she has performed with Mallarmé Chamber Players, jazz artist Nnenna Freelon, Baroque Southeast, Fiori Musicali, Tallahassee Bach Parley, the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra and the Iowa Center for New Music.
Dr. Pereksta holds degrees from The University of Iowa, The Peabody Conservatory of Music and Florida State University. She was a two-time recipient of Peabody Career Development Grants, and as a Doctoral Fellow at FSU, taught Baroque Flute and Recorder, directed the Baroque Ensemble and earned the Certificate in Early Music. Her doctoral treatise, “Twentieth-Century Compositions for the Baroque Flute,” was a winner of the National Flute Association’s 2004 call for DM/PhD Papers. Twice a major prizewinner in the NFA Baroque Flute Artist Competition, Dr. Pereksta later served a five-year term as Coordinator of the competition and is presently Chair of the NFA’s Historical Flutes Committee. She has published articles in Traverso and The Flutist Quarterly, and has performed and presented at numerous NFA conventions. In 2009 she was appointed the new Editor of Traverso, a quarterly historical flute newsletter.
Dr. Pereksta’s primary flute teachers have included Betty Bang Mather, Leone Buyse, Charles DeLaney and Robert Willoughby. She also studied baroque flute with Christopher Krueger and Colin St. Martin, recorder with Michael Lynn, and orchestral conducting and literature with the late James Dixon.