All services by appointment. Call 343 333-3084 OR email: William Egnatoff Flute Services <egnatoff@kingston.net>
Fees and terms subject to change without notice. Call or email for details. Last updated November 2022
Individual and group instructions for all levels.
Complete services for the flute—from student to professional. Customer must deliver and pick up instrument at 82 Braemar Road, Kingston. If shipping is required, additional charges will be levied.
Minor Servicing: $60/hr
Sticky keys? Pads not seating? Keys out of adjustment? Broken spring or tension not right? Servicing on an as-needed basis by appointment. As you wait or next day service, according to work required.
Regular flute servicing (annual or more frequent for heavy use; every two years for light use). A flute, whether a student or professional model, should receive regular "clean, oil, and adjust" servicing. This includes complete disassembly, cleaning, and oiling; minor dent removal; adjustment of key coupling and elimination of lost motion; spring tension adjustment, adjustment of headjoint cork or replacement if needed; adjustment of tenons for proper fit; and minor adjustment of pads to ensure proper seating. Substantial pad work, including some replacement, will result in additional charges. Flute will be in excellent playing order when done.
Normal turnaround: Two-three working days.
Includes Clean, Oil, and Adjust items together with: complete repadding (normally Lucien Deluxe pads); replacement of all corks and felts; dent removal; removal of end play in hinge tubing, and polishing.
Note: for flutes that are plated, tarnish will be removed to the extent possible but polishing will not be done and the price adjusted accordingly.
Normal turnaroud: two-three weeks. Padding with Schmidt and Straubinger pads require advance key cup measurement and time for order and delivery of pads. Whatever pads are used, cost of pads will be added to overhaul price.
Normal turnaroud: one-two weeks.
Call or email for prices.
Dr. William Egnatoff began playing flute in 1955 at age 7 1/2 in Melfort, Saskatchewan, and began teaching flute in 1960. His teachers included Dietrich Wiegel (a German-trained bandmaster), James Bolton (a photo-chemist), Ed Abramson (who studied one-year with Kincaid at Curtis); Nicholas Fiore (University of Toronto, Toronto Symphony), John Wummer (New York Philharmonic), and Britten Johnson (Peabody Institute, Baltimore Symphony) during four summers 1963-1966 with the National Youth Orchestra; Marcel Moyse (flute and woodwind master-classes 1970-1979), and Robert Aitken (Music at Shawnigan, 1981, 1982; Robert Aitken in Italy 2012-2016, 2018). Egnatoff's teaching is based on that of his most influential teachers&emdash;Abramson, Moyse, and Aitken. It is also influenced by many years of choral singing and training, several years of voice study, and reading of Alexander technique and body-mapping literature. From 1974-80, he taught flute at the Department of Music, University of Saskatchewan. He played in the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra 1961-68 and 1974-80 (Principal) and the Saskatoon Woodwind Quintet. He directed the SSO Summer Orchestra Workshop 1975-78. During graduate study in physics at the University of Toronto 1968-71, he played baroque music with Te Deum Concerts in Dundas, Ontario, and played in the Hamilton Philharmonic (2nd flute, 1969-70) during Boris Brott's inaugural year. He studied composition 1965-67 with Murray Adaskin and has written several instrumental and choral works. His degrees are in physics and he has interests in musical acoustics.
In Kingston, he plays in The Kingston Classics Trio, Classic Delights Duo, Classic Delights Trio, and for several years directed a flute choir at Chalmers and Sydenham Street United Churches. He sings in the Cantabile Men's Chorus and has sung in the choirs of Chalmers and Sydenham Street United Churches, and the Melos Choir and Period Instruments, with whom he occasionally played baroque flute. He plays in Flute Street, a Toronto-based flute choir led by Nancy Nourse and is a founding member of the Kinston Baroque Consort with which he plays baroque flute. Until retirement August 30, 2013, he was Associate Professor, Computers in Education, Faculty of Education, Queen's University (July 1984 through August 2013).
He has a long collaboration with Toronto-based flutist and composer Robert Aitken. He was contributing editor of Robert Aitken: Just a Glimpse—Stories from 1979 and is currently preparing a biography of Robert Aitken and a book and Web site with details of his life and approach to the flute and its repertoire that figure in his recordings, performances, and teaching.
In September 2013, following retirement from Queen's, he began expanding his musical activities, resuming flute repair services, and beginning studies of flute acoustics—including high-speed photography of the air jet—in collaboration with a Queen's colleague Darko Matovic and with master flute maker Jonathon Landell.
He began servicing flutes in about 1973 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, learning through self-study and visits to the shops of William S. Haynes Company and Verne Q. Powell Flutes. Egnatoff's flute-servicing work ended almost completely in 1980, although he maintained his workshop, and did visit Jack and Mara Goosman in Toronto for further padding advice. In recent years, he expanded his workshop and resumed work. To develop his skills further to be able to do complete restorations, in June 2013 he took courses in padding and overhaul with master flute maker Jonathon Landell, founder of the Vermont Guild of Flute Making. In March 2014 he took the Straubinger padding course. In September 2014 he took the headjoint-making course of the Vermont Guild of Flute Making and is now playing his 1969 Powell with a fine headjoint of his own making. (Landell was working for Powell in 1969 and may well have made the original headjoint.)
He enjoys playing his Böhm-system flutes from piccolo through bass and flutes from around the world, especially from the Andes.