Interdisciplinary flutist/composer Tessa Brinckman has been praised for her “chameleon-like gifts and virtuoso elegance” (Gramophone), an “excellent flutist” (Willamette Week) who “play(s) her instrument with great beauty and eloquence” (Music Matters New Zealand), and as “an adroit creator of sound worlds” (Fanfare). Originally from Aotearoa/New Zealand, she has premiered hundreds of new works (commissioning over forty), with many prominent classical music ensembles, concert series, musicians and composers across the globe. Now based in New York City since 2022, she enjoys creating and performing unique work that honors synesthesia, dialect, innate meter and collaboration, often on geo-poetic themes in a surrealist spirit.

She performs internationally as an orchestral, chamber, soloist and resident artist, in numerous and wildly diverse productions, from the Oregon Symphony, the Atlantic Center for the Arts (FL), Waikato and Canterbury Universities (New Zealand), Festival of New American Music (CA), CCRMA (Stanford, CA), National Flute Association, Goodman Theater (Chicago), Britt Festival Orchestra (OR), Wuzhen Theatre Festival (China), Poisson Rouge, Roulette and Sound of Silent Film Festival, Princeton Sound Kitchen, and Livewire Festival (Baltimore). Her latest critically acclaimed album, Take Wing, Roll Back (New Focus Recordings (2024) embodies her personal and artistic connections to New Zealand, USA, South Africa and France. She is one of the featured musicians on the critically hailed album Aeon, a 2026 tribute to seminal Aotearoa composer, Martin Lodge. Recent collaborations in 2025 include Mexico’s Duo Duplum at the Cervantino Festival, Guanajuato and the Manuel Enríquez International Forum of New Music, Mexico City.

Playing flute, piccolo, alto, bass, contrabass and baroque flutes, and miscellaneous keyboards, Tessa also co-directs the ever-polymathic bi-coastal duo, Caballito Negro, with percussionist Terry Longshore, commissioning significant new work for flute and percussion, most recently from Juri Seo and Baljinder Sekhon. She is the artistic director of WildLine, a new project-based chamber music ensemble based in the wilds of northern Manhattan, that has launched their first concert series season, Still Here | One, Two and Three in 2026.
Her composition team for Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman’s White Snake was nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award (2014) during its 3 year tour. Her experimental video (with Jane Rigler), Women in Parallel Empires (2021), exploring the moon, extraction, and “Empire”, and the animation The Gorgon Cycles (2023) (created with Miles Inada and Devyn McConachie) depicting Medusa’s rise in the Anthropocene, have won 22 film festival awards for music scoring, animation and experimental film, and have been broadcasted in NYC and Europe.

Recent score commissions include an orchestral work for Unbound Symphony in collaboration with composer Sarah Bassingthwaighte, and solo and chamber works for maverick contemporary flutists, Lisa Cella and Lisa Bost. Recent supporting grants include New York Women Composers, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Chamber Music America. Her artist residencies include Atlantic Center for the Arts and Bethany Arts Community. She has served on the music faculties of colleges such as Southern Oregon University, and teaches international workshops and masterclasses that address flute culture, music-making and artist activism.