Anthony Allen

Baroque flute

Anthony Allen enjoys a diverse life in music, and has played modern and baroque flutes, baroque violin, recorder, and viola da gamba, and has been known to occasionally be heard as a bass vocalist. Early in his career he was founder and director of the Portland (Maine) Early Music Consort, an instrument/vocal ensemble devoted to playing music from the medieval through baroque periods that performed in the New England region. For 18 years he was a member of the Maine State Ballet Orchestra as a flutist and piccolo player, performing some of classical ballet’s finest scores including Prokofiev’s Cinderella and Peter in the Wolf, Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun, Delibes’ Coppelia, Mendelsohn’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, and of course Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker. He has also performed with the Portland Opera Repertory Theater Orchestra and the Maine Chamber Ensemble.

Focusing on the violin later in life than is the norm, Anthony started playing baroque violin at age 27, and went on to study baroque violin as an undergraduate several years later. He has performed with the Newport Baroque Orchestra (Rhode Island), Boston Cecilia, and the Arcadia Players Chamber Orchestra (Massachusetts). In Oregon, Anthony has performed on violin, flute and recorder with the St. James Bach Cantata Vespers Orchestra and has been principal violinist with The Ensemble in performances of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Blow’s Venus and Adonis, and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.

An educator for many years, Anthony directed the orchestra and string program at the Eugene Waldorf School (OR) and the Chestnut Hill School in Newton, Massachusetts. He founded a violin and recorder program at the Catherine Ellison-Rosa Parks School in Mattapan, MA, and taught flute and recorder at Bates College, the Portland Conservatory of Music, and the Maine School for the Performing Arts. He is a graduate of the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts with a double major in baroque flute and baroque violin.