This research concerns itself with the Western flute and its contemporary use in improvisational music. Improvisation is a broad spectrum of musical activities and practices that seek to create music through non-notated, or through the interpretation of, partially-notated means. Despite both a wealth of improvisational practitioners and improvisation's potential benefits for flute pedagogy, improvisation in the classical American flute community is not given the necessary attention it deserves. Through the perspective and detailed examinations of my own improvisations, this research establishes a context to better understand the flute in improvisation, and helps to correct ongoing, tacit assumptions that box flute performance practices into a narrow, non-improvising, "classical" category.

In this study, I explicate many of my own musical experiences with the intention that those experiences may be representative of other flutists and improvisers. This premise, the ability to understand a phenomenon through another's representative experience, is one of the primary tenets of phenomenology. Since music may be experienced in many ways, phenomenology, a methodology most easily described as a scientific method for analyzing experience, is a potent tool for investigating music, and specifically, musical improvisation. This study recontextualizes improvisation and, necessarily, contemporary techniques as integral constituents of contemporary performance practices for the flute. From this position, a contemporary identity for the flutist is constructed that exists contrary to many traditional norms. Furthermore, contemporary pedagogical strategies for teaching both the flute and improvisation are suggested. This study also demonstrates a potential model for others interested in investigating improvisation.