Jean-François Beaudin

Coming from a family of visual artists, my father only listened to African American jazz and my mother preferred Early Music. She therefore introduced her four children to the recorder by bringing an excellent teacher, Claire Dagenais, to the house. Around the age of 17 I decided to make a profession of baroque music on period instruments. I then had as a teacher, at the college and university, an eminent musicologist of French origin, Jean-Pierre Pinson. He introduced me to intellectual rigour and made me discover Europe and France by inviting me to follow him as an assistant professor for his summer internships.

Afterwards, I went to Holland, to perfect my skills at the Den Haag Conservatory, with Ricardo Kanji and Bart Kuijken. I was interested in baroque flute making and found myself in The Hague during the two years that Frederick Morgan, the famous Australian recorder maker, stayed there. I was then able to attend his introductory classes in flute making and to regularly attend his workshop in Amsterdam.

When I returned to Canada, I received a fellowship from the Canada Arts Council to study with Frederick Morgan in Daylesford, Australia, for six weeks. It was an unforgettable stay! Inspired by the discovery of his technical drawings of Frans Bruggen’s collection of eighteenth-century flutes I developed my own style of plans.

Plan of GA Rottenburgh flute by Jean-François Beaudin

One of my most famous and widespread drawings in the world is that of the flute by G. A. Rottenburgh, owned by Bart Kuijken, which I made at his request. Since 1979, I have drawn and measured more than 300 flutes. On this website you can see my personal list of plans, as well as those of the great instrument museums that have asked me to measure their most beautiful specimens.

Subsequently, in Montreal, I held several positions as a teacher and inaugurated recorder classes at McGill and Concordia Universities as well as at CEGEP St-Laurent. At that time, I was determined to make the Quantz flute my main model. So, I went to the Library of Congress in Washington DC to make a plan for an original copy of the Miller collection.

Quantz flute by Jean-François Beaudin

Back in France in 1983, I was part of many ensembles, and contributed to concerts and recordings, thus participating in the emergence of the baroque music movement. It was also an opportunity for me to make several flute plans, first for myself, in private collections, but also for the Musée du Conservatoire National de Paris and the Instrument Museum in Berlin, where they are still available. Musician friends and makers also influenced my experiences and learnings, including Marc Écochard and Danièle Alpers, Olivier Cottet and Jean-Christophe Maillard.

Around 1987, I became interested in modal music and this research directed my attention to the music of India. In the autumn of 1988, I spent six months in Madras to learn Carnatic music, played on small bamboo flutes. I then lived ‘in the old-fashioned way’, with my master, Mr. T.S. Sankaran. I learned the basics of this music and measured all the flutes I could get my hands on. That’s when I discovered that they were designed with the same ‘bore profile’ as our modern Boehm flutes.

In the spring of 1989, I had the idea of applying this ‘bore profile’ to the invention of a new type of flute, baroque in style, but more powerful. I was motivated by the fact that if we want to avoid artificial amplification of the instrument, old flutes do not have a sufficient volume in our concert halls. My tests became conclusive and since 1994, this reinvention of the baroque flute has been at the heart of my concerns and has never stopped evolving. My modern traverso is now called the Beaudin flute.

Beaudin flute (modern traverso) by Jean-François Beaudin

Since 1991, I have been living in a bucolic countryside, near the American border, not far from Montreal, and I devote myself to making wooden flutes. I keep my playing technique alive by playing for an hour or two every day and playing gigs in my area. Over the years, I have assimilated an enormous amount of invaluable experience and knowledge that I like to share with as many people as possible.