Miranda Arana (Irish Flute, Irish Penny Whistle)

Miranda Arana grew up in western New York, and began playing the flute in her early teens. After receiving classical training at Eastman School of Music, she went on to discover her passion for improvisation and world music. She spent her twenties traveling, living, and working in Southeast Asia, and learned to play the Vietnamese bamboo flute. After getting a graduate degree in Ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, she settled in Oklahoma in 1999, and currently teaches world music at the University of Oklahoma. Since coming to Oklahoma, she has been an active member in four outstanding local music groups: Alma Latina, a folkloric Latin American ensemble; Nur, Oklahoma's premier Middle Eastern ensemble; Banish Misfortune, one of Oklahoma's longest-lived Celtic music ensembles, and Arabesque, an instrumental duo that blends Celtic, Middle Eastern, European, American folk, and original material.