Solen Lesouef Mopane & Silver, D

A wonderful player in as-new condition. The unlined mopane head joint produces a warm, chocolatey, woodsy tone, and the embouchure is cut to accept a wide range of inputs, from sweet and delicate to fully driven. Tuning is excellent across the registers, and the flute is notably expressive. The tone holes are medium-sized and very comfortable, well suited to a wide variety of hand sizes. The instrument has a slender outer profile and sits comfortably in the hands.

About the Maker

Solen Lesouef is an Irish flute maker based in Brittany, France, building flutes in the keys of D, C, Bb, and Eb in African blackwood and mopane. She studied woodwind instrument making and repair in Newark, England, for three years, where she learned to turn on a lathe and was immersed in the Clare tradition through housemates who played fiddle and Irish flute. She has been making Irish flutes for 15 years and shares her workshop in Brittany with her husband, Daniel Ross, a fiddle maker. Her flutes are styled on a large-bore Rudall and Rose, with considerable development of her own. She is one of the few female makers working in the simple-system flute tradition. Demand for her instruments is substantial: as of late 2025, the wait time stands at around 10 months for a keyless flute and three and a half years for keyed flutes.