Erin Lesser is a GRAMMY® Award-winning flutist who has been described as “superb,” “excellent,” “elegant” (NY Times), brilliant” (NY Concert Review) and “a multi-tasking virtuoso” (New Yorker). She has performed at prestigious venues around the world including Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Hall, the Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ (Amsterdam) and Alice Tully Hall where she performed the American premiere of Morton Feldman’s For Flute and Orchestra with the Janáček Philharmonic. She has worked with prominent classical composers including Tania León, Steve Reich, Marcos Balter, Helmut Lachenmann, Georg Friedrich Haas, Tyshawn Sorey, John Luther Adams, Kate Soper, George Lewis, Pierre Boulez, and David Lang, as well as experimental groups like Medeski Martin and Wood, the Dirty Projectors and electronica artists Jlin, Eartheater and King Brit. As a recording artist, Erin can be heard on over 50 albums on record labels including Nonesuch, Cantaloupe, Carrier, Hat[now] Art, New Focus, Aeon, New Amsterdam, Albany and Capstone.

Erin has been a member of Wet Ink Ensemble since 2001. The group was named “the best ensemble of 2018” (NYT), and has been described as “thought-provoking, expansive and fearless in testing the limitations of what instruments or musical forms can be.” Erin is also a member of Alarm Will Sound, a group that won a 2026 GRAMMY for Best Small Ensemble Performance for their recording of Donnacha Dennehy’s Land of Winter. They were awarded an ASCAP Concert Music Award for “the virtuosity, passion and commitment with which they perform and champion the repertory for the 21st century” and have been called the “future of classical music” (NYT). A founding member of the Argento Chamber Ensemble, Erin was featured on the group’s award-winning recording Winter Fragments; music of Tristan Murail. She won the 2008 National Flute Association chamber music competition with her flute and percussion duo, Due East.

A graduate of the University of Ottawa (BM) and the Manhattan School of Music (MM, DMA), Lesser also completed a two-year fellowship with Ensemble Connect, a program run by Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School and the Weill Music Institute. Erin is proud to be the Kimberly-Clark Professor of Music and Professor of Flute at Lawrence University. Erin is co-founder of Music for All, a program which brings music into new and/or underserved venues throughout the Fox Valley community in Wisconsin. She is also on The New Music at Lawrence committee helping to bring her passion for new music to the LU campus.

Ms. Lesser is a Pearl Flute Performing Artist.