Working out of a 1200 square-foot garage-bay shop in North Reading, Massachusetts, Kanichi Nagahara founded Nagahara Flutes in 1991; flute number "001" being completed in July of 1992.

Knowing the difficulty of competing in the US with the larger flute makers with well-established reputations Kanichi concentrated his marketing efforts in Japan and Europe, where the flute has been most successful.

Within a few years the company had outgrown the small shop and in April 1999 moved to its present location, a modern 3,000 square-foot facility in lovely Chelmsford, Mass.

A Different Kind of Flutemaker

As a rather small company (9 craftsmen as of August 2007), Nagahara Flutes is in a unique position to offer customers personal attention.  We wecome calls and visits from both present and potential customers.  We like to know as much about our customers as possible, and many of our customers also become personal friends.

Nagahara Flutes is also very committed to research and development of new ideas and products. Although the modern flute has seen relatively little change over the past 100 years, we feel that there is yet room for improvement; to that end we are constantly experimenting with such things as pad design, different types of support steels, bore design, and of course, different headjoint cuts!

While other companies may focus more on marketing and advertising, we feel that our energies are better spent improving our product.  We do not make student- or intermediate-model instruments; we concentrate on making the best professional-level products possible.  Our customers the world over agree that this has been the right approach.