Helen Campo (born November 21, 1962) is an American flute virtuoso. She has held the flute chair on nine Broadway shows, including the long-running hit Wicked. Campo has recorded extensively for films, television, and albums, including the 2005 Grammy-winning cast album of Wicked.
Early years
Campo is the youngest of four children born to general surgeon Anthony Guy Campo, and registered nurse Helen Anne Turini Campo.
Campo began her studies of the flute at age eight with Deborah Richardson, and then with Ronna Asycue. During high school, she studied with Principal Flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra Murray Panitz. At age 15, she became the recipient of the William Kincaid Scholarship to attend the Philadelphia Settlement School where she studied counterpoint, solfeggio, wind quintet with Shirley Curtis, long time bassoonist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and flute with John Krell, long time piccolo player with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Campo won her first concerto competition at the age of 12. At 13, as a freshman in Gateway Regional High School, Campo won a position in the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra under Maestro Joseph Primavero and became the youngest member of the orchestra. At age 16, she was named valedictorian at Gateway Regional High School.
Throughout her early teens, Campo also worked professionally as a member of the Haddonfield Symphony, Moorestown Chamber Orchestra and the NJ Festival Orchestra and performed extensively as a soloist and competition winner. During these teen years, she performed as concerto soloist with the New York String Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Haddonfield Symphony, South Jersey Orchestra, New Chamber Players of Philadelphia, Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, and Cherry Hill Wind Symphony. In this period, she recorded solo programs for radio stations in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. and performed actively as a recitalist in Europe as well as the US.
As a teenager, when she played a concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the reviewer in The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote: “Mature Soloist wins bravos. She showed mature feeling for the misty style and considerable poise.” During this same period, she was described in newspaper reviews as a "very fine, mature player", and “A dynamic performer who doesn't merely play to audiences, but beckons their involvement like some pied piper."
Undergraduate and graduate years
Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts offered her a full scholarship to begin her Bachelor of Music degree at the age of 16. There she continued her studies with John Krell for one year and then transferred to New England Conservatory of Music (NEC), where she was the recipient of a full scholarship for the remainder of her degree. There she studied with flute virtuoso, Robert Stallman, and flutist/composer and new music expert, John Heiss.
In 1983 while at NEC, she became the youngest flutist ever to win the Concert Artists Guild competition, an honor she retains as of this writing. She was chosen as a 1983 Tanglewood Orchestral Fellow. She won the 1983 WFLN Radio Young Artists Competition and continued to record solo programs for many other radio stations, including WUHY Philadelphia, WQXR, and WGBH NY. While still at conservatory, she won the 1982 James Pappoutsakis Competition, the 1983 Margaret Yardley Award, and performed as a soloist in recital and with many orchestras including Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra, Indian Hill Chamber Orchestra and in Europe as well.
Reviewers from this period wrote: “Her technique is impeccable. She varies her tone with a musicianly care well beyond her years, from bright aggressive clarity to soft throaty understatement." "The young flutist from New Jersey….is a solid player with a great deal of fluency . . . lean and forceful." “Campo plays a magical flute,” “Talk about hitting all the right notes, Helen Campo’s been doing it almost from the time she learned how to play the flute…Miss Campo has won so many young artist competitions, she probably holds more medals than the whole US Olympic team took in Sarajevo,” and, “Honors come faster than she can play the flute.”
When she graduated, Campo was awarded the George Whitefield Chadwick Medal, named for the former director of New England Conservatory and awarded each year to ‘the senior whose entire Conservatory record of achievement has been most distinguished.
Campo continued her studies with Robert Stallman at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College under a graduate assistantship. She earned an MA and the CUNY Queens College-wide Graduate Achievement Award in 1985.