Biography
Dr. Sophia Tegart has led a varied and award-winning career as a performer, recording artist, and pedagogue. Tegart is Assistant Professor of Flute at Washington State University where she was awarded the 2020 College of Arts and Sciences Early Career Achievement Award and the 2023 President’s Distinguished Teaching Award. During the summers, Tegart teaches at the WSU Cougar Music Camp in Pullman, WA and Young Musicians and Artists (YMA) in Oregon. Additionally, she has taught at the Interharmony International Music Festival in Acqui Terme, Italy and Music for All. Tegart’s students have been finalists at, and/or, won numerous competitions including Musicfest Northwest, Myrna W. Brown Competition, Frances Walton Competition, and national MTNA Young Artist and MTNA Chamber Music competitions. Tegart has also taught at the University of Northern Colorado, University of Idaho, and Pacific University.
A Yamaha Performing Artist, Tegart has performed throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Tegart regularly performs at the National Flute Association conventions and College Music Society regional and national conferences. Abroad, she has performed at the China ASEAN Music Week, International Conference on Women’s Work in Music in Wales, and the Thailand International Composition Festival. As a concerto soloist she has performed with the Spokane Symphony, the Washington Idaho Symphony, and the Kansas City Civic Orchestra, among others. An advocate of music by women composers, Tegart’s debut solo album, Palouse Songbook, was released on Centaur Records in 2020 and features newly commissioned and contemporary works by women composers. In 2022, Tegart’s flute duo, the Cherry Street Duo, released an album of flute duets by women composers, including her arrangements of Six Menuettos by Maria Szymanowska.
Tegart is a member of the Pan Pacific Ensemble, a wind quintet dedicated to the advancement of music by composers from around the Pacific Rim. In 2022, the Pan Pacific Ensemble received the prestigious American Prize in Professional Chamber Music and was a featured performer on Chamber Music America’s Showcase Concert. The Pan Pacific Ensemble has released three albums through Albany Records that feature commissioned works as well as all the wind quintets of Dr. Chen Yi. Tegart also performs with the WSU Solstice Wind Quintet and the Crossroads Quartet, the latter of which released an album of flute quartets by contemporary composers in 2023.
Currently, Tegart serves as the president of the Northwest Region College Music Society Chapter Board and was previously the president of the Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation Board as well as the Greater Portland Flute Society. Tegart also founded and serves as the Artistic Director of Fridays at the Clock, an outdoor summer music series at Washington State University.
Tegart received her doctorate from the University of Missouri-Kansas City where she held the Graduate Woodwind Quintet Flute Fellowship and studied with Dr. Mary Posses. She is also a graduate of the University of Oregon and Washington State University, and it is her privilege and honor to work at her alma mater with the most amazing students and colleagues in the world! Go Cougs!