Historical Flutes and Scholarship 
After winning first prizes in both the National Flute Association’s Baroque Flute Artist and Doctoral Dissertation Competitions, Mary Oleskiewicz quickly established herself as an international performer of historical flutes and the leading expert on the flutist, theorist and composer Johann Joachim Quantz. She is an authority on music at the 18th-century court of the Prussian King Frederick “the Great,” and her highly acclaimed essays, editions and recordings have focused on the music of Quantz, C.P.E. Bach, King Frederick, and the Bach family.
A resident of Boston (USA) and Berlin (Germany), she has performed, lectured, and given masterclasses throughout Europe and North America, and in Japan, Australia and Mexico. She is a member of Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra and has appeared as soloist with numerous period instrument ensembles, among them La Fontegara of Mexico City, Newton Baroque, Newport Baroque, Arcadia Players, Boston Pro Musica, and Chicago’s Baroque Band. She has released four solo recordings with the Hungaroton Classic and Naxos labels. A CD of flute concertos performed with Miklos Spanyi and Concerto Armonico is in production.
Mary Oleskiewicz’s recording projects are closely connected to her research and editing work. She is in the process of preparing first editions of the repertoire of two CDs released in 2011: Flute Sonatas by Frederick “the Great” (for Breitkopf & Härtel) and Johann Joachim Quantz (AR Editions). She recently edited the sonatas for flute, harp, oboe and viola da gamba for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Collected Works, taking into account newly available musical sources.
Currently she serves as Associate Professor of Music at the University of Massachusetts. A fluent German speaker, during 2008-2009 she taught performance practice in the Early Music program at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Previously she served as Professor of Flute at the University of South Dakota, and Curator of Musical Instruments at the National Music Museum. She has held several prestigious multi-year fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany) and the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) allowing her to reside in Germany to research, edit and record flute music of the 18th-century.
Among Mary Oleskiewicz’s principal flute teachers were Walter Mayhall (modern flute) and Sandra Miller (baroque flutes). She holds a Bachelor of Music in Flute Performance, and she earned degrees in Performance Practice and musicology at Duke University (Ph.D.) and Case Western Reserve University (M.A.). Her instrumentarium of flutes ranges from the middle ages to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She also plays baroque recorder, bandoneon, and improvises on Native American flutes.
Argentine Tango
Since 2005 Mary Oleskiewicz has been dancing tango, the traditional dance of Argentina, which she has studied privately with masters in Buenos Aires, Berlin, and Boston. What started out as a passionate hobby soon lead to teaching courses in musicality for dancers. She has held numerous classes at Phoenix Studio in Berlin for Brigitta Winkler, with whom she studied dance for several years. In 2011 she joined the Qtango Orchestra of Albuquerque, NM, performing on flute and bandoneon.
