Rate My Professor Mihoko Watanabe

Mihoko Watanabe, a native of Japan, is Professor of Flute and chair of the Certificate in Entrepreneurial Music program in the School of Music at Ball State University. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Musashino Academia Musicae in Tokyo, Japan, a master’s degree and Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music, and a doctorate from the University of Michigan, where she studied flute performance and ethnomusicology. Before joining Ball State University, she held teaching positions at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada, and the University of Windsor in Canada. As an orchestral musician, she holds principal flute positions with Orchestra Indiana and has performed with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Aspen Music Festival Orchestra, and others including the Windsor Symphony Orchestra and Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra. She has given recitals, chamber performances, and concerto solos internationally in Japan, Israel, Canada, England, and the United States.

Watanabe’s research specializations include ethnomusicology with a focus on Japanese traditional music; she received a research grant from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh to study Kazuo Fukushima’s Mei for solo flute in Japan. Her key publications feature an article on Mei in The Flutist Quarterly (Spring 2008), translated into Dutch for Fluit (2011) and German for Flöte aktuell (2013). Active in chamber music, she is a member of faculty ensembles such as the Musical Arts Quintet, whose CD American Breeze was released in 2012 on Albany Records, Duo Viva with Doppler Effect (2006, Little Piper), and Duo Rouge with Two by Three (2024, Parma Recordings). She premiered Jody Nagel’s flute concerto From Days of Yore with the Muncie Symphony Orchestra in 2012. Among her honors are prizes from the Japan Flute Association and National Flute Association competitions, and top prize in the 2015 SAVVY Arts Venture Challenge. Watanabe presents lecture-recitals and workshops at conferences including the National Flute Association and College Music Society, serves as an international clinician and adjudicator, and teaches flute studies, literature, pedagogy, and entrepreneurship courses at Ball State University.