Laura Falzon, currently living and working as a musician in New York, is performing as a soloist with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra. Maria Blanco catches up with her.

Flautist Laura Falzon has been away from Malta for 20 years.

I know that many MPO musicians are looking forward to having you back for this concert. What are your memories of your time with the MPO and how do you feel about coming back?

To me the Manoel Theatre Orchestra (as it used to be called) is my musical home. It is where my music career was born and bred. It is also a home that I left but which I would never forget.

I started performing with the orchestra from a very young age, at 16, initially as a part-time piccoloist and then as full-time flautist. I must also add that the orchestra brings me fond memories of colleagues with whom I performed, some of whom have now retired or moved on, as well as conductors with whom I have worked very closely, particularly Mro Joseph Sammut and Mro Charles Camilleri, whom I consider as my teachers, mentors and friends.

There is always a sense of nostalgia with the orchestra and for me this concert carries an element of homecoming with it.

You have been away from Malta for over 20 years now. What countries and musical experiences have you gathered along the way?

I first left Malta to study with Sebastian Bell in London in the early 1990s, and then came back for a couple years until my husband and I decided that we make a go of the UK. Britain gave me the opportunity to develop my work with other performers and composers from all over the world.

Four years in Scotland saw me developing further networks and I was also involved in getting a new music festival off the ground. When my husband John got a position as a professor at Columbia University in New York, my family moved from the idyllic Scottish Highlands to the hectic life – people might say – of Manhattan.

In New York I took the opportunity to further my studies once again, reading and obtaining another Masters and also a doctorate from Columbia University.

New York was not an easy move but it proved to be a further catalyst for my music, taking me on to further spheres of musical experiences which I could never find anywhere else.

As well as the opportunity to perform across the repertoire in venues like the Lincoln Centre, Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space and other venues like Le Poisson Rouge and the Tank, in New York I widened my network and established my own ensembles: Id-Dinja, Two Flutes and Issa Sonus. Being based in New York City, I could extend my work across the US and beyond.

In this way I continue to develop new music with composers based in New York and from across the globe.

While some might think this is all great, the arts environment in cities like New York and London is very challenging and not always easy. Musicians struggle and work hard as there is no funding unless they compete and work hard for it.

However, this environment also gives one the opportunity to take risks and develop stuff which one cannot do anywhere else. So while I give it my all, I like the challenge that comes with it.

So what would you consider to be some of your most defining moments as a professional musician?

Looking back, I feel that my music career has developed incrementally and often I do not realise how far it got me. Both my daughter and my husband always tell me that I live for music and that music is my life.

Living as a musician requires absolute dedication and in this respect the defining moments come when one is not expecting them – such as when I was once called by the late composer and professor John Mayer to go and see him at Birmingham Conservatoire and there we developed a collaboration which led to him composing new works for me and which I performed in the UK and in the US.

There has also been a whole generation of young composers with whom I have worked. In total I have premiered well over 50 new pieces for flute, most of them written for me.

Together with my performing, I also teach in wonderful seats of learning like my Alma Mater Columbia University, as well as the City University of New York, New York University and Yeshiva University, also in New York.

Recently I have been elected associate member of Random Access Music (RAM) which represents high-calibre New York musicians who specialise in delivering exciting performance of new musical works by living American composers. Getting such recognition gives one a reason for doing this kind of work.

Why did you choose to perform the Nielsen’s Flute Concerto in Malta?

This year, all around the world, we have been celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Carl Nielsen, who was born in 1865. He was a fiddler’s son who became the greatest Danish composer of all time.

This coincides with the same anniversary for the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. So together with Brain Schembri, the artistic director of the MPO, we decided that performing the Nielsen’s Flute Concerto for this programme would be ideal since the MPO, just like many orchestras around the globe, is dedicating this programme to the music of the two Scandinavian composers, on the occasion of their 150th anniversary.

Nielson’s Flute Concerto is performed quite a lot. One might say it is an eclectic concerto but this is because it is rich with a variety of different moods. Nielsen himself suggested that the flute’s home is in arcadia and that it is best suited for pastoral moods. However, as well as the lyricism of the flute, the concerto has times when it sounds bold, very energetic and dramatic.

You clearly hold music and Malta very close to your heart. Apart from the performance with the MPO, what are you looking forward to enjoying during your short stay?

As a family we are all involved in Maltese matters. My husband writes and contributes to the press and has also published books about Malta. Likewise, our daughter is also intrigued by Maltese literature and post-colonialism in her own studies. This is what makes us Maltese as well as citizens of a wider world.

Malta is where our families are and where we could claim our roots. So for me Malta is a point of reference, which makes me happy but also sad, for many reasons.

To me this concert is an important event as I feel I need to give back but also one always wants to be appreciated in the place where one has grown up.

As Maltese friends always tell me, my absence from Malta has been too long and so I hope this will not be another quick visit that happens once in a decade. Unfortunately due to work back in New York, I cannot stay for a long time here. But I plan to come back more frequently – and I hope that more invitations of this sort will be forthcoming.

• Laura Falzon is performing Nielsen’s Flute Concerto with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Christoph Gedschold, at the Manoel Theatre on Friday. For more information, visit www.maltaorchestra.com and for tickets, log on to bookings@teatrumanoel.com.mt.