Flutist sees motherhood, music as ‘Diametrically Composed’
It was the assumptions that upset the classical composer and flutist Allison Loggins-Hull 15 years ago, the moment her belly began to swell and round and the world realized she was pregnant with her soon-to-be-born son.
“I was 27 and in a very stable relationship and there was never a thought in my mind that I shouldn’t have this baby,” said Loggins-Hull, now the mother of Jonathan, 14, and Peyton, 8.
“But people began coming up to me, very concerned, and asking, ‘What are you going to do now? Are you still going to do music?’ There’s this prevalent idea that being an artist and a mother are in conflict. It freaked me out and made me a little insecure.”
The 41-year-old New Jersey resident, a rising star in the classical music world, is among three artists and mothers who will combat that notion Friday at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park. The trio will perform “Diametrically Composed,” a program of newly commissioned works about motherhood that feature the flute, voice and piano. The program’s title is a play on the expression “diametrically opposed” which the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as two things that are exact opposites.
In addition to playing the flute, Loggins-Hull, a 2024 artist in residence at the Clarice Smith, composed some of the interludes between pieces. She will be joined by the vocalist Alicia Hall Moran, who wrote her own songs, and pianist Gabriela Martinez. The trio also will perform pieces composed by three other musicians who are also mothers: Paola Prestini, Sarah Kirkland Snyder and Jessica Meyer.
Loggins-Hull said she came up with the project in 2017 after reading a friend’s Facebook post. The friend, a highly accomplished and in-demand musician, wrote that she worried that a newspaper article mentioning her children would harm her career.
“Though it’s getting better, being a mother still carries a stigma for female artists, especially
in the music world,” Loggins-Hull said. “There are a lot of assumptions that get made about your availability, your ability to get the job done, what your priorities are.”
By any objective measure, Loggins-Hull has a career that many musicians — parents and non-parents alike — might envy.
As a freelance flutist, she has navigated the difficult cross-over between classical and popular music. In 2023, she led an ensemble of flutists at a gala that backed pop sensation Lizzo. She has been featured on a Super Bowl commercial and at the
2020 Grammy Awards, and was co-principal flutist for Disney’s 2019 movie remake of “The Lion King.”
And her classical music credentials are equally impressive.
She’s in the midst of a threeyear fellowship with the Cleveland Orchestra, one of the so-called “Big Five” American orchestras. She has played the flute at Carnegie Hall and as part of New York’s prestigious Mostly Mozart Festival, and her compositions have been performed by major American orchestras from the Los Angeles Philharmonic to the San Francisco Symphony.
In 2007, Loggins-Hull and the composer and flutist Natalie Joachim co-founded “Flutronix” and began performing music that combines the flute with electronics. The duo has been praised by The Wall Street Journal for “redefining the flute and modernizing its sound by hauling it squarely into the world of popular music.”
Not bad for a kid who didn’t receive any formal musical training until she was 15.
“I love how the flute sounds in my body as I’m playing the instrument,” Loggins-Hull, a Chicago native, said.
“You get to a place where you are so connected with your breath that it really feels as though you are singing as you are playing, as though you are vocalizing through the instrument. When I’m playing really well, the flute literally feels like an extension
of myself. I can feel it vibrate in my hand.”
Loggins-Hull’s musical training might have started late, but her talent was immediately apparent. Almost before she knew it, she found herself on the typical career path for an aspiring musician: college (at the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music), to be followed by a graduate degree in music-making and then international rounds of orchestra auditions.
But as she was preparing to enroll in graduate school, Loggins-Hull experienced what she jokingly refers to as “a quarter-life crisis.” She realized that the path extending before her wasn’t the life she wanted. She nixed graduate school in favor of exploring music from any genre that grabbed her by the ears and turned her head. (She eventually returned to school to earn a master’s degree in composition from New York University.)
“The graduate school curriculum is about teaching music students to become great artists,” she said. “It is centered around the standard orchestral repertoire. But there’s all kinds of amazing music in the world. I wanted to see what else was out there.”
It’s no surprise, then, that when “Diametrically Composed” is performed at the Clarice Smith, audience members will find a computer and drum machine on stage in addition to music stands and a piano. There will be some auto-sampling, some electronics, some snatches of recorded conversation.
“Sarah’s piece is very much about not being a helicopter parent and letting her child take risks,” Loggins-Hull said.
“Jessica’s composition is about maternal power and was inspired by the leaders of tribes. My interludes feature the voice of my daughter when she was younger and casual phone conversations with my collaborators.”
She acknowledges that mixing motherhood and music will always be a balancing act.
“There are days where I feel as though I’ve been the most awesome mom in the world, but I didn’t spend much time on my music,” Loggins-Hull said, “and there are days when the opposite is true. I have to accept the fact that I can’t do everything at 100% capacity all of the time, and that’s OK.
“We have to learn to give ourselves grace.”