Nancy Toff

NYFC president 1992-1995, 2008-2011, 2018-2021

Nancy Toff is the author of Monarch of the Flute: The Life of Georges Barrère, The Development of the Modern Flute, and The Flute Book, and was curator of the exhibition Georges Barrère and the Flute in America at the New York Public Library, for which she wrote the catalog.  For her work on Barrère she has received the Dena Epstein Award for Archival and Library Research in American Music from the Music Library Association and grants from the Sinfonia Foundation and the American Musicological Society. She collaborated with flutist Leone Buyse to program and annotate two CDs of music dedicated to Barrère (Crystal).

A frequent speaker at music, library, and history conferences and at universities nationwide, Toff has been a consultant to the Library of Congress and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A former secretary and member of the board of directors of the National Flute Association, she founded its archives and oral history committee and has served on the special publications and research committees and the Flutist Quarterly editorial board. She received the National Flute Association’s Distinguished Service Award in 2012.

Nancy Toff retired as vice president and executive editor at Oxford University Press. She has also held editorial positions at Time-Life Books and Music, Vanguard Records, and the New Grove Dictionary of American Music. A graduate of Harvard, she studied flute with Arthur Lora and James Pappoutsakis. 

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