About Emily
Flutist and producer Emily Duncan is an electrifying, theatrical artist creating new performance experiences that live at the intersection of music, technology, literature, and art. As a contemporary specialist who loves the “weird” side of the flute, 95% of the music she performs is spooky but only 5% of it is written by dead people. She has worked with David Lang, Thomas Adés, Nathalie Joachim, and Nadia Sirota, performed with Lizzo at the 2023 Met Gala, and has toured with the bands Hawthorne Heights and Escape the Fate. Her debut album, Woolf at the Door, released on Neuma Records in July 2025 and features the first professional audio recording of the world’s first beatbox flute concerto, “Native Tongues.” Along with dozens of composers across multiple musical genres, she is currently embarking on a lifelong project to commission new interdisciplinary flute pieces for each work in Edgar Allan Poe’s canon.
In the 2024/2025 season Emily performed in and production managed City Lyric’s PIERROT, a bold new staged adaptation of Schoenberg’s work that incorporated mime, Victoriana, and an additional scena and musical piece by Katy Early and Omar Najmi. Emily also served as the production manager for the 2024 all-AAPI cast Off-Broadway revival of See What I Wanna See with Out of the Box Theatrics.
In 2022, Emily founded the web app GigCrunch to help freelance artists take back control of their finances and ensure they are being paid fairly. The prototype is free and currently available to try!
Emily holds a bachelor’s degree in music and a bachelor’s degree in English from The University of Iowa where she also completed studies in the Undergraduate Creative Writing Program. She holds a Master of Music Degree from The Juilliard School. She is currently based in NYC.