Event Highlight: Author discussion with Ernestine Whitman

Ernestine Whitman. Photo by Micah Greenberg.
Ernestine Whitman. Photo by Micah Greenberg.

On Saturday, Oct. 5, Ernestine Whitman, who is a retired flute professor from the Lawrence Conservatory of Music, visited campus to host an author discussion regarding her memoir “Countermelodies: A Memoir in Sonata Form,” which was published by She Writes Press and distributed by Simon & Shuster on Sep. 24.

Ernestine Whitman served as a Lawrence faculty member for over 33 years before retiring in 2011. In her memoir, she writes about her experiences teaching: “The constant search for a richer flute tone guided my teaching, and nothing thrilled me more than hearing a student’s gorgeous sound soar above other instruments in the student orchestra […] Even the less ambitious students — those who wouldn’t get into the orchestra — had breakthrough lessons when, after months of painstaking work that seemed to yield no results, their sound would burst forth with color, beauty, and depth.”