Polyphonic flute featuring a snake motif and intuitive tuning. This instrument is composed of two different tubular flutes which can be played independently or together to create multiphonic melodies and beat frequencies.

Polyphonic flutes are tubular duct flutes where one instrument can be made up of two, three, or even four different flutes.  Oftentimes the flutes have separate air channels so that they can be played individually or in different combinations.  These types of flutes have a rich cultural history; they were common to Mesoamerica, made by cultures like the Colima, Aztec, and Maya.

Even though they’re challenging to make, I’ve been drawn to polyphonic flutes because as a musician and composer I find them so exciting.  I love being able to play multiple notes at the same time and exploring both harmony and dissonance in the same instrument. 

Double flute installed in a discovery drawer of the Wall of Wonder

The Wall of Wonder features digital displays of artworks and artists, discovery drawers with samples of artists’ materials and artworks to touch, and other interactive elements.
 

My double flute with snake motif sits in a discovery drawer with the theme “Play with Clay” and can be experienced through sight, touch and sound; there’s a button to push that triggers an audio of a short composition I created with the instrument.
 

Short composition I recorded, edited and produced with the Double Flute in Ableton Live.

I did recordings with the flute in Ableton Live and then arranged and edited the audio to create a short composition of about 2 minutes.

Whistling bottles are complex instruments that were produced by different cultures from about 1500 BCE to 1500 CE, in a wide geographical area stretching from Peru to Mexico.  No traces of their original uses have yet been found.  These instruments are composed of a system of hollow tubes and vessels and produce sound through one more or more small whistles.  They can be played by blowing into their spouts to activate the whistle, and some can be played through the movement of water in their interior, which pushes air out through the whistle as the instrument is rocked back and forth.

This whistling bottle features two small whistles, which are embedded in the base of the stirrup where it connects to the backs of two pelicans.  When the instrument is played, by blowing into the vertical spout, the air travels through the spout, through the rectangular vessel, and up through the hollow bodies of the pelicans, to activate the whistles.

View the original Double-Whistle Vessel with Sea Birds, Lambayeque (Sicán) (Artist), 900-1100 (Middle Horizon)

View the original Double-Whistle Vessel with Sea Birds, Lambayeque (Sicán) (Artist), 900-1100 (Middle Horizon)

This video features a short composition I played, recorded, and produced with the instrument shown in the image, which is an historic recreation of a Whistling Bottle from the Sicán/Lambayeque culture of Peru. 

Whistling bottles are sophisticated sound artifacts composed of systems of hollow vessels, tubes and whistles.  These complex instruments were made for about 3,000 years by many different cultures across Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and as far North as Mexico. 

This whistling bottle has two pelicans, each with a small whistle embedded in the stirrup near its back.  The whistles can be activated either by blowing into or across the spout of the instrument, or through movement of water in its interior.

The original object is stewarded by the Walters Art Museum and forms part of their Art of the Americas collection.

View the original Double-Whistle Vessel with Sea Birds, Lambayeque (Sicán) (Artist), 900-1100 (Middle Horizon)

Image shows a detail of the whistles embedded in the back of each pelican.

View the original Double-Whistle Vessel with Sea Birds, Lambayeque (Sicán) (Artist), 900-1100 (Middle Horizon)

Image shows the historical recreation finished with traditional techniques: painting with colored engobes and  burnishing.

View the original Double-Whistle Vessel with Sea Birds, Lambayeque (Sicán) (Artist), 900-1100 (Middle Horizon)

View the original Double-Whistle Vessel with Sea Birds, Lambayeque (Sicán) (Artist), 900-1100 (Middle Horizon)

View the original Double-Whistle Vessel with Sea Birds, Lambayeque (Sicán) (Artist), 900-1100 (Middle Horizon)

Image from performance at the Centro Cultural Kirchner in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

I am playing a bamboo Siku, or panflute, collected by the Orchestra with a Peruvian instrument-maker. 

Excerpt from "Antara" a composition by Chilean composer Carlos Zamora, during a performance at the Regional Conference of Higher Education of Latin America and the Caribbean (CRES 2018) in Córdoba, Argentina.

Performance of "Entonces en la Escala de la Tierra", a composition by Susana Ferreres for sculptural ocarinas, whistling bottles, double flute, and noise generators.

Alejandro Iglesias Rossi on stage playing three Huéhuetls, which are traditional carved wooden drums that were used by the Aztec and other cultures in Mexico.  These instruments were collected by the Orchestra with a contemporary Mexican drum-maker.

Alejandro Iglesias Rossi (Buenos Aires, 27 de julio de 1960) is an Argentine composer, director, researcher, and educator. He has received two emblematic musical distinctions from UNESCO: the "First Prize of the International Tribune of Composers" (Paris, 1985) for his work Ancestral Rites of a Forgotten Culture, and the "First Prize of the International Tribune of Electroacoustic Music" (Amsterdam, 1996) for his work Angelus.

At the National University of Argentina at Tres de Febrero, Iglesias Rossi created the Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments and New Technologies. There he is director of the Master's Degree in Musical Creation, New Technologies and Traditional Arts,​ and of the Bachelor's Degree in Indigenous, Classical and Popular Music of the Americas, and also directs the Center for Ethnomusicology and Creation in Traditional and Avant Garde Arts (IDECREA).

Iglesias Rossi is a founding member of the Musical Research and Creation Network of America (RICMA), and he is president of the Argentine Music Council and vice-president of the Music Council of the Three Americas of the International Music Council of UNESCO.         

Image from a concert at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, of Susana Ferreres, the Visual and Scenic Arts Director of the Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments and New Technologies. 

Ferreres is wearing a sculptural Armadillo headdress, which she designed and fabricated herself.

Susana Ferreres is a multidisciplinary artist and has dedicated her life to researching the Indigenous iconography of the Americas as well as the Eastern Byzantine and the medieval West. In 2004, together with the ethnomusicologist Isabel Aretz and the composer Alejandro Iglesias Rossi,  she founded the Center for Ethnomusicology and Creation in Traditional and Avant-garde Arts at the National University of Tres de Febrero. There, she directs the Iconographic and Corporeal Research Program in Sacred Art and created the first Program for the Recovery of Indigenous Instruments and Traditional Masks of the Americas.

She is director of performing and visual arts of the Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments and New Technologies. There her body of iconographic work is intertwined with avant-garde creation, giving rise to an artistic-academic model that is taught in the Bachelor's Degree in Indigenous, Classical and Popular Music of the Americas and in the Master's Degree in Musical Creation, New Technologies, and Traditional Arts. Ferreres produces and directs the creation of the sets, costumes, choreography, and masks that the Orchestra has presented in concerts around the world.

Image from a performance at the Centro Cultural Kirchner in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

I am playing a Lakota hand drum made by Sonja Holy Eagle.  This instrument was collected by my adopted Uncle Mark Van Norman, of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, who gifted it to the Orchestra in 2017.

Read about Sonja Holy Eagle

Image from performance at the Centro Cultural Kirchner in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the OIANT performed together with the Orquesta Sinfónica Juvenil Nacional San Martín (National San Martín Symphonic Youth Orchestra)

Image from a performance at the Leo Brouwer Festival de Música de Cámara in Havana, Cuba. 

I am playing instruments called "bastones" that were made by members of the Orchestra.

Image from performance at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. 

Musicians are playing Teponaztli and Huéhuetls, which are hand-carved traditional drums that were used by the Aztec and other cultures of ancient Mexico.  These percussion instruments were collected by the Orchestra with a contemporary Mexican drum-maker.

Image from a concert at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. 

I am playing instruments called "bastones", which were made by members of the Orchestra.

Recording of a short composition with Timber Rattler Triple Flute

This flute-making workshop was part of a bilingual workshop and class series given at Creative Alliance over the course of 2024, with the support of an Arts in Education grant from the Maryland State Arts Council.

This program was prepared in collaboration with the non-profit arts organization Creative Alliance; their bilingual department Creative Immigrant Educators of Latin American Origin (CIELO); their in-house Latinx organization Artesanas; and their multicultural hub for education, the Creativity Center.

The Mud to Music programming series was developed for English and Spanish-speaking youths and adults ages 15+ and half of the activities were offered in English and half in Spanish.

In 2023 I worked with the Capitol Height Elementary School to offer a 5-session artist-in-residence. The Mud to Music rattle-making residency program engaged 5 classrooms for a total of 125 students and 5 classroom educators. 

Over the course of our sessions, students were introduced to different Pre-Columbian instruments like whistling bottles, polyphonic flutes, and ocarinas, and learned through a step-by-step process to construct and decorate their own working clay rattles using time-honored hand building techniques and simple pottery tools.  Each student was encouraged to explore individual creativity through sound design and decoration, in order to create an instrument that would be unique in both sound and form.

In November 2022 I gave a free flute-making workshop at the Baltimore Museum of Art as part of the museum's BMA Maker Series.  

I lead a tour of instruments in the museum’s Indigenous Arts of the Ancient Americas collection and we discussed the sophisticated ways that Pre-Columbian cultures have used sound, music, iconography, and sculpture to express their world visions.  Participants then learned through a step-by-step process to build their own clay flutes using ancient pottery-making techniques.  Engaging in this practice helped us to contemplate the relevance of ancestral wisdom in our world today.

This workshop was offered with the support from the Maryland State Arts Council.

Musical instruments have helped us communicate and express ourselves since the beginning of human culture. Learning about the musical instruments of the ancient Americas and building and playing our own instruments helps us to awaken the memory of our connection to nature, cultivate presence through working with clay, and experience joy through sound and music-making. In this hands-on workshop we learned about musical instruments that have been made across Central and South America for thousands of years and learned to build our own working clay rattles.

This rattle-making workshop was part of a bilingual workshop and class series given at Creative Alliance over the course of 2024, with the support of an Arts in Education grant from the Maryland State Arts Council.

In 2024 I worked with the Neelsville Middle School to deliver an 8-session artist-in-residence to support the school's activities and objectives. The Mud to Music rattle-making residency program engaged 5 classrooms for a total of 180 students and 3 classroom educators.  Over the course of our sessions, students were introduced to different Pre-Columbian instruments like whistling bottles, polyphonic flutes, and ocarinas, and learned through a step-by-step process to construct and decorate their own working clay rattles using time-honored hand building techniques and simple pottery tools.  Each student was encouraged to explore individual creativity through sound design and decoration, in order to create an instrument that would be unique in both sound and form.

Even though rattle-making is an historic and "low-tech" art practice, I have been very pleased to see the levels of enthusiasm and engagement in both elementary and middle school aged children, and school teachers have noted this as well.  There is something about working with clay that tends to draw us in, no matter our age.  And the act of building an instrument, where we are not only shaping clay but also sound, is particularly captivating.

In this hands-on class, participants got an in-depth introduction to the Ocarina, a type of globular clay flute that has been made for thousands of years in Central and South America. Over the course of four sessions, we built an understanding of and confidence with the skills needed to design, build, and decorate both simple and sculptural clay flutes.

Throughout the course of the workshop participants were introduced to different types of historical and original hand-built musical instruments; learned to construct a simple ocarina and designed and built a zoomorphic (bird or animal-shaped) ocarina; and were introduced to traditional finishing techniques like painting with engobes and burnishing.

This longer-format class was an excellent opportunity for participant's unique creativity to shine.  I encouraged us to consider different animals, birds, and other more-than-human beings with whom we feel a closeness or kinship.  These became the basis for our sculptural instruments, which were a more advanced project that we were able to take on once we had an understanding of the construction of simple ocarinas.

This flute-making class was part of a bilingual workshop and class series given at Creative Alliance over the course of 2024, with the support of an Arts in Education grant from the Maryland State Arts Council.

In 2023 I worked with the Capitol Height Elementary School to deliver a 5-session artist-in-residence. The Mud to Music rattle-making residency program engaged 5 classrooms for a total of 125 students and 5 classroom educators.  Over the course of our sessions, students were introduced to different Pre-Columbian instruments like whistling bottles, polyphonic flutes, and ocarinas, and learned through a step-by-step process to construct and decorate their own working clay rattles using time-honored hand building techniques and simple pottery tools.  Each student was encouraged to explore individual creativity through sound design and decoration, in order to create an instrument that would be unique in both sound and form.

This image shows a rattle in process.  We have both halves of the rattle, which have been shaped using "pinch pot" technique, and we have a collection of clay pellets, which this student has chosen to create in different sizes, which will alter the sound that his rattle will make once fired.

In 2021 I gave a flute-making intensive workshop over the course of two days at Washington Street Studios in Harpers Ferry.  Participants were introduced to different Pre-Columbian instruments, and learned to build a simple ocarina and a sculptural ocarina.

I really enjoy teaching ocarina-making, because it's an instrument that anyone can make and that anyone can pick up and play.  Ocarinas are constructed in such a way that- if we know how to breath, we can play them!  This instrument allows for us to be able to engage in an intuitive and playful way, cultivating a connection with music-making that we sometimes don't allow ourselves to explore otherwise.

In 2023 I gave a series of Mud to Music instrument-making workshops at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts in Annapolis, with the support of an Arts in Education grant from the Maryland State Arts Council.

Throughout the course of these workshops; half of which were given in English and half in Spanish, participants learned to make clay flutes and rattles with time-honored hand building techniques and simple pottery tools.

© Maryland State Arts Council 2025, MSAC.org

2023

10.5 x 4 x 8 in

Earthenware, oxides, pigments, beeswax

Horn inspired by Great Blue Heron. This sculptural instrument can be played in different ways to produce sounds ranging from percussive to bird-like calls to deep vibrating drones. 

This music mask produces sound with internal bells and two small flutes that have two finger holes each.  The flutes can be played separately or together to produce melodies and beat frequencies.

Photo by Julieta Bilbao of Nómada Cerámica.

2023

12 x 3 3/4 x 1 in

Earthenware, oxides, pigments

Original instrument composed of two tubular flutes; one with pentatonic tuning and the other which acts as a drone producing a single note when played.  The flutes have separate air channels which allow them to be playing individually or together.

Polyphonic flutes are tubular duct flutes where one instrument can be made up of two, three, or even four different flutes.  Oftentimes the flutes have separate air channels so that they can be played individually or in different combinations.  These types of flutes were common to Mesoamerica, made by cultures like the Colima, Aztec, and Maya.

2021

7 1/2 x 2 1/2 x 2 in

Earthenware, oxides

I was instructed in the creation of this ancient flute by one of my teachers, Estéban Valdivia, who received presidential permission to study instruments in the archives of all of Ecuador's museums.  Being able to analyze broken historic artifacts, as well as completing x-ray scans of intact instruments, allowed Valdivia to study the inner workings of this complex flute in detail to understand the construction of the two internal whistles hidden within the abdomen of the flute.

Because of the particular construction of the acoustic system, this flute has a very particular, airy timbre.

Read about the Jama-Coaque culture

Read about Estéban Valdivia

2023

10 ½ x 4 x 8 in

Earthenware, oxides, pigments, beeswax

Horn inspired by Great Blue Heron. This sculptural instrument can be played in different ways to produce sounds ranging from percussive to bird-like calls to deep vibrating drones. 

The shape, design, and coloring of the instrument is inspired by the morphology of Great Blue Heron, who has been an important bird throughout my life story.

The trumpet was one of the most significant musical instruments in the pre-Columbian Andean World, in terms of denotation of power. These “natural” trumpets or horns were made of clay or conch shell and produced a single pitch.  However, a skilled trumpeter could produce different tones through varying lip vibration and air pressure.  

As part of our Fall sessions, I brought in a collection of my own original instruments which reimagine Pre-Columbian sound technologies through the lens of personal narrative and regional mythology.

This image shows a demonstration I gave with my Lilac Double Flute.  Polyphonic flutes are tubular duct flutes where one instrument can be made up of two, three, or even four different flutes.  Oftentimes the flutes have separate air channels so that they can be played individually or in different combinations.  These types of flutes were common to Mesoamerica, made by cultures like the Colima, Aztec, and Maya.

This instrument is my own version of a flower flute, inspired by Lilac, with whom I feel a sense of kinship.

© Maryland State Arts Council 2025, MSAC.org.

Students work through a step-by-step process using hand-building techniques and simple pottery tools to construct their own unique ocarinas, or clay flutes.

The Ocarina is a vessel, globular, or globe flute.  Ocarinas are one of the most widely known and popular ceramic instrument of all time, with traditions in virtually all parts of the world. They have been made since prehistoric times, from a variety of materials. Although the name “ocarina” was coined in 19th century Italy, the instrument itself has a much longer history.  Early inhabitants of Mesoamerica and South America were prolific ocarina designers and builders for thousands of years. The variety and creativity of their globular flutes is remarkable and unparalleled, with ocarinas made in the form of different birds, animals, reptiles, fruits, vegetables, and deities.

Each student was encouraged to explore their own creativity through tuning and decorating their flutes.  As a result, even though we all made the same kind of instrument, each flute was completely unique in both sound and form.

Over the course of our Fall sessions, I brought in a set of my own hand built ocarinas, so that scholars could begin to get familiar with the mechanics of the instrument.  We used guided improvisation exercises to practice listening to one another and playing the instruments, in preparation for the public presentation we would give with our own flutes after their firing.

© Maryland State Arts Council 2025, MSAC.org.

In preparation for our public presentation at UMBC, scholars spent time exploring their unique instruments and developing sonic gestures and accompanying symbols that we then used to create a graphic score to perform.