About Intimate Christmas: This CD was a collaboration with my long-time friend, Shuichi Komiyama. It contains some of our favorite Christmas songs and a few notable works from the classical repertoire and is an excellent accompaniment to decorating the tree, Christmas breakfast, or unwinding after frantic holiday shopping. About Mary Fukushima: A flutist for the twenty-first century, Mary Fukushima has established herself as a leading ambassador for the music of today’s composers. Her 2006 Carnegie Hall Debut featuring music composed since 1945 was praised as a “powerhouse performance” by critics from New York Concert Review, and led to performances at the Cortona Contemporary Music Festival in Italy. In the months following her debut, Mary has concertized across the U.S. and in Singapore where she will return several times during 2007-2008. Her devotion to expanding the repertoire for flute has resulted in several unique commissions, including a work for flute and two pianos by Pulitzer-Prize nominated composer David Rakowski (Gli Uccelli di Bogliasco), a piece for alto flute and piano by Forrest Pierce (The Ruin of the Cypress), and a work by Kansas composer Brian Bondari for flute and piano-four-hands (Div). Mary has also commissioned and premiered a new multi-movement work for flute and piano from award-winning Singaporean composer Zechariah Toh Chai Goh (Images my dream saw). While devoted to the music of living composers, Mary is equally at home in the classical flute repertoire and has been a featured soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In addition to her activity as a performer, Mary is a devoted educator with a passion for bringing music to elementary-age children. She was the co-founder and director of both the Brooklyn Band Academy (New York) and the Maui World Music Workshops (Hawaii). Both of these programs provided music education to children without other means of attaining this important part of their development. The Brooklyn Band Academy was a privately-funded elementary band program with three ensembles (Jazz, Beginning, and Concert Bands) with students ranging from 3rd through 8th grades. The band received the highest awards at festivals in Pennsylvania and Florida, and students regularly obtained the highest marks in New York’s state music exams. The students of the Brooklyn Band Academy have since entered some of New York City’s most competitive and selective high schools, and are performing with many of the city’s best youth orchestras. The Maui World Music Workshop was a four-week summer band festival of instrumental music classes for elementary-high school students. Students formed two ensembles (beginning and advanced) and received private lessons and ensemble instruction, as well as classes in music history and theory. The festival culminated with a concert featuring chamber music and solos in addition to performances by the larger ensembles. Mary has studied with many of the world’s best flute pedagogues, including David Fedele, Linda Chesis, and Bradley Garner. She will receive her Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in 2007 from the University of Kansas. Mary holds a Master of Music degree from the Manhattan School of Music (NY) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Long Island University (NY).