Meet the Professor
Praised for her "luscious, full sound" (American Record Guide) and "effortless precision" (Flutist Quarterly), Nicole Riner maintains an active national presence as a recitalist and pedagogue. She has presented masterclasses at universities and conservatories across the country and has performed as a guest artist with orchestras and at summer festivals, chamber music series, and flute fairs in the United States, South America, and Europe. A champion of contemporary music, Nicole has also commissioned and premiered over twenty new works by numerous composers, both as a soloist and with her chamber group, Verismo Trio. In 2016 she joined the board of Flute New Music Consortium, a commissioning organization for flutists.
Nicole currently teaches at University of Wyoming, where she is Visiting Assistant Professor of Flute. She has also served on the faculty at the Sulzbach-Rosenberg International Music Festival in Germany every August. Other prior appointments include the nationally recognized Interlochen Arts Camp, Michigan State University, and Indiana University-Purdue University. She has also held positions with Wyoming Symphony and Humbach Theatrehoff Orchestra. IN the public school realm, Nicole is founder and artistic director of Chamber Music Lab, a residency program for high school bands, and Flute Crew, a middle school group learning experience for flutists. She is also a guest instructor in iCadenza's Coro program, where she has produced instructional materials for music entrepreneurs and serves as a career coach.
Much in demand as a clinician and lecturer, Nicole's dissertation, The Girls in the Band: Women's Perspectives on Gender Stereotyping in the Music Classroom, has been presented at national conferences in Colorado, Wyoming, and Hawaii and published in the online magazine GEMS (Gender, Education, and Music Studies). Her pedagogical writings have been published in Colorado Flutist, International Tuba-Euphonium Association Journal, Flute Talk, and the National Flute Association's Pedagogy Anthology, Volume II. She is also a regular reviewer for Flutist Quarterly, the publication of the National Flute Association.
Dr. Riner holds degrees from University of Illinois (BM), Michigan State University (MM), and Indiana University (DM). She is grateful to have studied with Kathryn Lukas, Richard Sherman, Alexander Murray, and Jan Boland. Her live performances have been broadcast on Interlochen (MI) Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, Wyoming Public Radio and Colorado Public Radio, where she had a recurring role as both writer and performer in the short-lived series, Telling Stories. She has recorded for the Centaur, ACA Digital, and Albany Record labels. Nicole performs exclusively on Altus flutes and is an Altus Performing Artist.