5 Things to Know about Demarre McGill, guest artist with the Fresno Philharmonic
By Donald Munro
The Fresno Philharmonic closes its 2025-26 Masterworks season this weekend. The concert includes the acclaimed flutist Demarre McGill in a performance of Kevin Puts’ Flute Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s powerful Symphony No. 5. The orchestra performs 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 11, and 3 p.m. Sunday, April 12, at the Shaghoian Concert Hall. Rei Hotoda conducts.
I caught up on Friday with McGill, the principal flute of the Seattle Symphony and a prolific soloist with many of the world’s great orchestras, a few hours before his rehearsal with the Fresno Philharmonic. Here are Five Things to Know about this accomplished artist:
1.
The first pivotal musical moment in his life came for him when he was 7. That’s how old he was when he was snooping through a closet and found a flute that this father had bought his mother before they were married. Curious, McGill took it to his father and asked how it was played. After producing his first note, he was hooked.
2.
The second pivotal moment in is life came six years later. At age 13, McGill went to the famed Interlochen music camp. He’d had a very good flute teacher in Chicago for severl years, and he thought ht was pretty good — a fact that he demonstrated when he won the first chair position. But at Interlochen, he had to compete with other players each week to keep his first-chair position, and at the next challenge, he lost the top spot.
“I was disappointed in myself, ” he says. “So that’s when I started to practice. I mean, aggressively — seriously and thoughtfully, I don’t even know how much I practiced before then, but I know that almost immediately it went up to three hours a day, and then it became, you know, four or five.”
3.
He comes from a musical family. Fresno Philharmonic patrons might remember McGill’s brother, Anthony, principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic, who performed the Copland Clarinet Concerto in Fresno during the 2016-17 season.
4.
There’s a sweet story behind the Puts Flute Concerto. It was commissioned by a Bay Area couple named Joe and Bette Hirsch for the 2012 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz
Puts himself describes it in a piece written for the California Symphony website:
“A few years ago, Bette secretly approached the festival about commissioning an orchestra piece from me for Joe’s 75th birthday. Not long after, Joe also secretly approached the festival about a chamber piece for the couple’s 35th wedding anniversary. My thought was that a single piece might suffice (!), and why not a flute concerto, as I had never written one, and Bette played the flute in her youth?”
McGill says the piece reflects the tenderness of the origin story.
“it’s a work full of love and celebration, from the opening melody and in the strings to the vibrant, vivacious energy of the last movement,” he says.
Here’s the best part: Joe and Bette Hirsch plan to attend the Saturday performance in Fresno.
5.
A flute concerto is a good “starter piece.” Never heard an orchestra before? That’s OK, McGill says.
“Let’s say a person has never even attended a classical music concert, and this person doesn’t even know what a concerto is. I think that the wonderful thing about about music, or art in general, is that your experience is valid. I mean, Especially in regards to this particular piece, it’s hard to imagine someone not having a beautiful experience.”
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