C-ton

A ubiquitous presence in the world of modern flute for over 30 years, Carlton Vickers is internationally regarded as one of today's most important performers of avant garde flute, in many instances, emerging as the authoritative performer of choice when it comes to the flute literature written in the last four decades.

Widely regarded as an alto flute specialist, Carlton Vickers presented the U.S. premiere of Brian Ferneyhough's Sisyphus Redux for alto flute solo, as well as subsequent world premiere performances of groundbreaking new works for Kingma system alto flute by Chris Dench, James Erber, Dominik Karski and Marc Yeats.

In particular, Australian composer, Chris Dench has found Vickers' work sufficiently intriguing as to compose a new body of works based upon his abilities. Between 1986 and 1991, Dench wrote a series of four large-scale solo flute works: Vier Darmstadter Aphorismen, de/ploye, sulle scale della Fenice and Closing Lemma, which Paul Griffiths has called ‘important’ and ‘remarkable’ in his book Modern Music and After. Specifically, of Vier Darmstadter Aphorismen, Dench states "I must admit to also thinking of the 4DA as a single piece (as well as four separate pieces: I like and actively utilise nestedness) so I tend to think of those four 1986-91 pieces as a Flute Tetralogue, although I have never flagged them as such. Perhaps now is the time." Spanning three decades, this monolithic commentary has remained a cornerstone of modern flute. Elegant. Inevitable. Since 2015, Mr. Vickers been working closely with Dench on what was originally intended to be a large format work for Kingma System alto flute, geminy. Vickers adds "Upon completion, Chris intimated to me his vision of a second body of works, a response to Vier Darmstadter Aphorismen, including a new work for my Kingma System bass, petrichor." According to Dench "...this new set of pieces would become the Flute Pentalogue, consisting of five independent pieces that can be performed as a group. They would therefore be: dawn is a girl, removing her necklace of stars... (C flute)  geminy (Kingma System alto flute) petrichor (Kingma System bass flute)  heliotropic (piccolo)  Brancusi's Birds (C flute) So that would be two virtually concert-length flute 'suites'. Might well be my last word on the flute solo genre, mind you..." The anticipated completion and recording is slated for late 2022/early 2023.

Since 1987, Carlton Vickers has worked in conjunction with, and has won the admiration of, such prominent composers as Milton Babbitt, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Martin Boykan, John Cage, Eric Chasalow, Chen Yi, John Corigliano, Mario Davidovsky, Stephen Dembski, Chris Dench, Jason Eckardt, James Erber, Richard Festinger, Don Freund, John Harbison, Jonathan Harvey, Jörg Herchet, Andrew Imbrie, Dominik Karski, Louis Karchin, John Kennedy, Arthur Kreiger, Stan Link, Steven Mackey, Donald Martino, Eric Moe, Tristan Murail, Shulamit Ran, Steve Reich, Roger Reynolds, Andrew Rindfleisch, Frederic Rzewski, Joseph Schwantner, Jeffrey Stadelman, Ernstalbrecht Stiebler, Harvey Sollberger, George Tsontakis, Massimiliano Viel, Scott Wheeler, Charles Wuorinen, Yehudi Wyner and Marc Yeats.

Vickers has appeared in concerts and recitals spanning four continents. Invitations include the Dresdener Zentrum für Zeitgenössische Musik, DIEM (Danish Institute of Electroacoustic Music), SEAMUS, Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festival and the Cleveland Contemporary Players.

His performances are featured on Albany, Bridge, CRI, Capstone, Centaur and contextrecords.