Lessly Cadena Altamirano

LESSLY CADENA ALTAMIRANO is studying her master’s degree in flute performance at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo-Michigan with Martha Councell-Vargas, where works as a graduate assistant. She is the first flute in the University Symphony Orchestra at WMU, first flute in Wind Symphony at WMU and she is part of the Graduate Woodwind Quintet at WMU. Altamirano got her bachelor’s in flute performance at Universidad de los Hemisferios in Ecuador with Gustavo Lovato. She won the Graduate Student Travel Grant in 2022 at WMU, where she presented a master class about qualities of sound, support and musicality in the flute for intermediate level students.

Altamirano has performed important concerts as a soloist and orchestra member in big stages like in Ecuador, Argentina, United States, Spain, Switzerland, and France. First flute of the Youth Orchestra of Ecuador, Bolívar Theater Orchestra and Hemisferios University Orchestra, and University Symphony Orchestra at WMU. Also, she was part of the Heartland Philarmonic Orchestra in Omaha-Nebraska.

Altamirano taught flute at FOSJE, AMAZONART, Youth Orchestra of Ecuador, Sinfonia por la Vida and FACES. In 2017, she belonged a musical project with AIESEC in Tucuman-Argentina. She is currently flute instructor at Kalamazoo Kids in Tune and she teaches flute to non-major undergrad students at Western Michigan University. She also has private flute students. 

She has attended to the International Flute Festival in the Center of the World in Ecuador from 2010 to 2022, FluteXpansions Sonic Immersion and the National Flute Association in Chicago in 2022, where worked as an inter, and Great Lakes Flute Festival in 2023. Her main master-classes include Pierre-Yves Artaud, Matthias Ziegler, Camilla Hointenga, Eric Lamb, Shanna Pranaitis, Angeleita Floyd, Sibel Pensel, Sheryl Cohen, Magda Schwerzmann, Celso Woltzenlogel, Felipe García, and Luciano Carrera.

She was a member of the Children Symphony Orchestra of Ecuador, the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ecuador, and she did internships in the Philharmonic Orchestra of Ecuador.