RIP Donald Peck
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I'm sure that no one here knows who he was.
Peck was the principal flute for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a long, long time.
92 years old....
As principal flute of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Peck performed on over three hundred recordings under twenty-two conductors for twelve labels. In his retirement, he recorded works for flute and piano with Melody Lord for the Boston label. Peck also was a longtime member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Alumni Association.
Peck served on the faculties of DePaul and Roosevelt universities, where he taught flute and woodwind ensemble. A frequent lecturer and guest teacher, he gave master classes at the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music in New York, at the Rotterdam Conservatory in Holland, for the Osaka Flute Club in Japan, at the Sydney Flute Association in Australia, and at over thirty universities and music groups throughout the United States and Canada. For many years, Peck played a flute — fashioned in platinum-iridium — handmade for him by Powell Flutes of Boston.
In 1997, the National Flute Association honored Peck with a lifetime achievement award. Indiana University Press published Peck's memoir, The Right Place, The Right Time! Tales of Chicago Symphony Days in 2007, and the Chicago Flute Club's biennial international flute competition is named in his honor.
I attended many concerts with Peck in the first chair of the CSO.
But, here's where it gets interesting.
In the late 1980s, iirc, Peck and the principal oboist, Ray Still, had a major falling out. These two guys sat next to each other for years and years. However, a dispute over union issues caused them to have a major, MAJOR, disagreement. It got so bad that for the rest of their tenures at the CSO, they never spoke to each other.
https://chicagoclassicalreview.com/2014/03/ray-still-1920-2014/
While acknowledged as a first-class musician, Still was a prickly, outspoken personality who sometimes alienated CSO management and his colleagues. His vocal support of union actions and caustic comments about management, led to music director Jean Martinon’s failed attempt to fire Still on musical grounds in the 1960s. While sitting next to each other and playing gloriously together Still and principal flute Donald Peck didn’t speak for decades.
