Whenever Valerie Watts performs, she gets nervous.

“I think I would be worried if I didn’t get nervous,” said Watts, a flute performance professor who has been teaching for almost 20 years at OU. “I now treat it as excitement, rather than thinking of it as nerves, per say.”

Watts will bring this excitement as she performs in a solo flute recital, something she tries to give every year, tonight at 8 in Pitman Recital Hall, located in Catlett Music Center.

Consisted of two acts, the Sutton Artist Series concert features both solo and chamber music that spans several centuries, from a Mozart quartet with strings to an electronic piece by OU faculty composer Konstantinos Karathanasis.

“I want to give something for every listener. Not everyone will like Mozart but they may really like the electronic piece, or vice-versa,” Watts said of the musical diversity she looked for in the program. “But I think also when you have a juxtaposition of work from different centuries, they highlight each other; they really stand out so people appreciate them for what they are.”

Because she has had a month between performing in the Chamber Players Series and her showcase, Watts has prepared about a month on the newer pieces. The older pieces, however, she has performed many times before.

“The Mozart flute quartet with strings I’ve played many times, so it’s like an old friend, and what will be fun is playing it with new people,” Watts said. “Now the electronic pieces are totally new to me, so that’ll be challenging.”

Karathanasis, a composition professor, offered to play an electronic piece he had written, and also suggested a friend’s, Richard Dudas, composition, because the effort putting up all the equipment for electronic music would make more sense for two pieces to be performed, Watts said. The pieces differ in that the flute will trigger a certain pre-programmed action on the computer in the Dudas piece, while Karathanasis will be at the computer making sounds during his composition.

Watts has always been interested in the different genres of music that cover classical to avant-garde, as it helps her grow as a musician with the new challenges each work presents.

“I think this electronic music is kind of a new area that I’m starting to look into more. Last year I played my first piece for flute and electronic, and there’s some other really interesting pieces out there I want to try,” Watts said.

She has played jazz flute (jazz is what Watts listens to when she comes home), and studied piano when she was younger growing up outside of Rochester in upstate New York. Watts said she got really serious about performing in her band program when she went to a preparatory program for high school students at the Eastman School of Music, as well as taking private flute lessons. She proceeded to audition for music schools, ending up at Northwestern University with a flute teacher who was a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, later getting her graduate degree at Eastman.

“One day I got a call from the University of Oklahoma to come and teach as a visiting professor,” Watts said. “So everything kind of worked out, and I was really enjoying teaching at a university.” Watts later got her doctorate and was given a full-time tenured position as a flute professor.

Having been at OU since 1989, Watts has taken other opportunities to teach different courses, such as an acoustics course in collaboration with a physics professor in which students tested how to improve the acoustics of OU’s music halls. Her students have also been working on independent study projects.

But as a performer, Watts has found her way of conquering the initial fears any novice can make, having come with the age and experience of an experienced musician.

“There’s a famous book called ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ that came out, and there’s this outer game we play – for a musician it’s giving the performance, for a tennis player it’s the tennis match – but then there’s the inner game, it’s the voices in our head that can totally take over and control our outer game,” Watts said. “I’ve thought a lot about it, and I feel like the older I get and the better I am dealing with it, the more I enjoy my performances.”

That certainly includes moving onto and trying new things, wherever those opportunities may be. For Watts, the place for doing so doesn’t matter as much as the experience itself.

“So that’s what I’ll keep doing, and it wouldn’t matter where I lived, I would be able to just keep trying new things, collaborating with different people, and I think I could really have … I do have a rich and satisfying life that way.”

More on Valerie Watts' concert:

OU flute professor Valerie Watts’ showcase faculty recital, which includes several other OU School of Music faculty member performers, will feature music from composers spanning several centuries such as Mozart, Schubert and OU composer Konstantinos Karathanasis.

8 p.m.

Morris R. Pitman Recital Hall, Catlett Music Center

Tickets are $8 for adults, $5 for students, faculty, staff and seniors.

For more information call Fine Arts Tickets Service at 405-325-4101.