Katherine created the Guinness World Record for the Longest Flute Marathon by an Individual in February 2012, to raise money for Cancer Research UK. Her mother-in-law had died from cancer in 2004. Katherine became the first person to hold the record on 18th February 2012 at Bedworth Civic Hall, Warwickshire – 25 hours 48 minutes.
In 2016 Katherine’s record was broken by Indian musician Murali Narayanan. A new record was set at 27 hours 10 minutes. As soon as Katherine found out she was determined to reclaim her world record in memory of her mum, and raise money for cancer charities once again, as her mum had died from cancer in February 2016. The date was set for August 2017.
Katherine had used her Muramatsu flute for the majority of the record attempt in 2012, only swapping to her Yamaha student flute when the pads of the Muramatsu became so waterlogged the flute struggled to play. 2017 was to be different. Katherine decided to try and do the majority of the record attempt on the Yamaha student flute her parents had bought her 33 years before. Amazingly the flute still had all its original pads and Katherine set herself the target of 33 hours. By using the Yamaha rather than her professional flute, Katherine was making the task considerably harder for herself. The Yamaha flute was used for over 50% of the World record time. Both flutes suffered a great deal with waterlogged pads which took days to dry out, and were virtually unplayable by the end. Both had to be sent to the workshop after such a grueling ask. In total Katherine had 91 different pieces of music (6 hours of music), which were repeated, in order, throughout the record attempt.
Katherine wasn’t able to achieve her target of 33 hours, which was a disappointment, but she regained her record and set a new target of 27 hours 32 minutes, 32 seconds. She finished as she started, on her beloved Yamaha flute, and ended with Annie’s Song in memory of her mum.
