Nicole Chamberlain (born in 1977) is an Atlanta-based composer and flutist, with degrees in digital media and music composition from the University of Georgia. She studied composition with Dr William Davis, also a bassoonist specializing in performing extended techniques. After working at a children’s multimedia company as a web animator and composer, she shifted her focus back to the concert stage, further exploring extended techniques in flute performance while balancing it with teaching and composing. In 2010, her opera Scrub-A-Dub Raw won Audience Favourite at the Atlanta Opera’s first 24-hour Opera Project, which led to the first ever commission of the children’s opera Rabbit Tales and the start of a career as a composer. She has had her works performed at National Flute Association Conventions (NFA) on multiple occasions, and several of her pieces have won NFA’s Newly Published Music Awards. Her compositions are influenced by storytelling and visual imagery, as remnants from her former career. The use of extended techniques enhances her specific vibrant and expressive tonal language, while acknowledging the heavy athletic demands placed on a wind player.

Asphyxia for Solo Flute was commissioned by the Oklahoma Flute Society for the final round of the 2016 Collegiate Competition at the University of Oklahoma. Along with an Honorable Mention for Flute New Music Consortium’s 2016 Composition Competition in the solo category, it also won at the 2017 NFA’s Newly Published Music Competition in the Solo Flute Category. As a medical term, asphyxia describes a condition in which a person cannot acquire sufficient oxygen through breathing. While it can lead to coma and death if lasting for a prolonged period of time, it’s first signs are light-headedness or dizziness, not uncommon in young flutists. Playing the flute requires plenty of air to be supplied by the performer, while extended techniques considerably add to the demand and call for both courage and stamina. In this well-structured piece, Nicole Chamberlain, with rare charm, rapidly exchanges a vast range of contemporary techniques: jet whistle, wide vibrato pulse, pitch bends, Ch, Ki, So, Sha, Za, and foot stomps. The opening is energetic Allegro, followed by the central section which adds contrast by using multiphonics and changes of tempo to close with a rhythmic and dramatic finale.