Tara Helen O’Connor, who Art Mag has said “so embodies perfection on the flute that you’ll forget she is human,” is an Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, a two-time Grammy Award nominee, and, as a member of the New Millennium Ensemble, a recipient of the Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award. She was the first flutist selected to participate in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program and is currently a member of the Windscape woodwind quintet and the Bach Aria Group.

O’Connor serves as Visiting Associate Professor, Adjunct, of Flute at the Yale School of Music. She also serves on the faculty at the Purchase College Conservatory of Music, Bard College Conservatory of Music, and the Contemporary Performance Program at Manhattan School of Music, and is Artistic Director of the Music from Angel Fire Festival.

A champion of contemporary music, Ms. O’Connor has premiered hundreds of works. She has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and has appeared on numerous recordings and film and television soundtracks. O’Connor has collaborated with such distinguished artists as vocalists Jennifer Johnson Cano and Dawn Upshaw, violinist Jaime Laredo, clarinetist David Shifrin, guitarist Eliot Fisk, and pianists Jeremy Denk, Peter Serkin, and Stephen Prutsman, and with such revered ensembles as the Emerson, Orion, and St. Lawrence string quartets. Among the festivals at which O’Connor has performed are the Bravo! Vail festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Music@Menlo, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Spoleto Festival USA.

O’Connor earned her bachelor-of-arts, master-of-music, and doctor-of-musical-arts degrees at Stony Brook University. Her principal teachers were Samuel Baron, Robert Dick, Laura Gustavsen, Julius Levine, Thomas Nyfenger (YSM faculty 1967-1990), Joan Schwartzman, and Keith Underwood.