Pamela Sklar performs frequently in the New York area on Flute, Piccolo, Alto Flute and Bass Flute. She enjoys working closely with composers & jazz artists and appears annually with Dave Brubeck. With Alan Hovhaness she was a featured performer in a program of the composer's works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY. She has played for Herbie Hancock with the JVC Jazz Festival Orchestra and performs at major halls & venues with various groups.
Director of the Nationally recognized trio L'Arema, she performed critically acclaimed original arrangements of music by Leonard Bernstein and worked closely with Pulitzer Prize winning composer Karel Husa. With L'Arema she premiered many new works, some of which are considered among standard repertoire for wind trio. For the National Flute Association in Washington, D.C. she also premiered new American works for solo flute. An artist/composer member of BMI, Pamela is currently composing a new piece for the NFA's Jazz Flute Big Band.
For many seasons Pamela Sklar toured throughout the USA, Canada, Mexico, in Paris & Marrakesh as solo flutist with jazz crossover pianist & composer Claude Bolling. Performing his world-renowned Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio (written for Jean-Pierre Rampal), she also appeared extensively with monsieur Bolling on television and with jazz greats Hubert Laws, Jack Wilkins and Larry Coryell. She has also appeared as flute soloist in Antigua, Italy and Japan, where she performed with the New York Ragtime Orchestra for five seasons.
For several seasons Pamela played in the Broadway orchestras of Beauty and the Beast and Phantom of the Opera; with Joel Grey she performed for the 1st televised Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards. She played in orchestras for the Grammy Awards with Gil Shaham (1997) and Aretha Franklin (1998). With tenor Andrea Bocelli she appeared numerous times on America's major television networks. In a cameo role she appeared on CBS TV's As The World Turns.
A studio musician, she has recorded for such artists as Tony Bennett, Luciano Pavarotti, Harry Connick, Jr., Natalie Cole, Anne Murray, Carly Simon, Boyz II Men, Elvis Costello, Paul Simon, Diana Krall, Celine Dion, Paula Cole, Clay Aiken, Rod Stewart, John Pizzarelli, Queen Latifah, Chaka Khan and Dream Theater. Pamela recorded her own CD with guitarist David Burgess and can be heard on hundreds of commercials and many film scores, including Shaft II, Working Girl and Ugly Betty. Pam is currently recording music which she has composed for her various ensembles.
A guest for many seasons in regional orchestras, Pamela also appears in recitals and gives flute clinics for elementary-high school students. Her other continuing performances & collaborations include the duo Harpenflute, the Sachem Trio with which she performs her original Jazz-Native American compostions (including A Tune For America); the Bluesmothers (featuring originals) and Pam's Pipers, a flute ensemble for which she arranges and composes music, co-featuring her private students playing in hospitals, orphanages, shelters and senior centers.
Born into a family of professional musicians (a cousin was famed violinist Michael Rabin), Pamela Sklar first began playing the flute when she was five years old. She studied at the Manhattan School of Music Pre-College Division and received her Bachelor of Music Degree with Honors in performance from the Mannes College of Music. Her teachers included NY Philharmonic principals John Wummer and Julius Baker, Samuel Baron, Karl Kraber and master classes with Marcel Moyse, formerly the last living legacy of the French School of Flute Playing.