Flutist Alexa Still has been active in both her native country and the U.S., where she was trained at the graduate level. Still is also a prominent educator and is a member of the faculty at the Oberlin Conservatory. Still was born in New Zealand in 1962. She took up the flute at eight, expressing a desire at first to play the saxophone but having her father veto the idea. Still attended the University of Auckland, earning her bachelor's degree in 1983. She then traveled to the U.S. for graduate studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where her principal teacher was Samuel Baron. At Stony Brook, Still earned master's (1985) and doctoral (1990) degrees, winning the New York Flute Club Young Artists Competition and the East and West Competition along the way. She also took lessons from Thomas Nyfenger. While completing her education, Still landed the post of principal flutist with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in 1986. She remained there for a decade, and her husband was a member of the orchestra's double bass section. Still has continued to work closely with the orchestra and has recorded with the group multiple times. In 1993, she made her recording debut with the New Zealand Chamber Orchestra on the Koch International label, issuing an album of concertos by Gordon Jacob, Thea Musgrave, and Malcolm Arnold. She continued to record for Koch International for many years. In the late '90s, seeking a more flexible schedule for her growing solo career, Still returned to the U.S. and took a faculty position at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has appeared not only in New Zealand, Australia, and the U.S. but also across Europe and South America, and in South Korea. Colorado may have attracted her for its wealth of opportunities to pursue her primary hobby, motorcycling, but in 2006, she moved to Australia to become a professor of flute at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Still returned to the U.S. to join the faculty at the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, where she remained as of the mid-2020s. In 2013, Still moved to the Oberlin Music label, where she has issued several albums, among them 2023's Wish: Music of Valerie Coleman. Nearly all her albums have focused on contemporary music. ~ James Manheim, Rovi