Viviana Cumplido Wilson

April 1, 2026

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A Mission of Mentorship and the Power of Representation

Most orchestral musicians understand that the job has changed over the last few decades, moving beyond showing up and playing. In order for an orchestra to thrive, musicians often take on other public-facing responsibilities, including contact with donors and community outreach.

For flutist Viviana Cumplido Wilson
of Local 586 (Phoenix, AZ), outreach— particularly to underserved communities in the greater Phoenix area—is a crucial way to help her orchestra stay relevant in the community and pay homage to her own upbringing.

Tight-Knit Community

Principal flute in both The Phoenix Symphony since 2006 and the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder since 2010, Cumplido Wilson grew up in Miami, the daughter of Cuban immigrants. “After the revolution when Fidel Castro came to power, many Cuban citizens left if they had the opportunity,” she explains.

Cumplido Wilson’s parents seized the chance to leave Cuba in 1963 on Cuban freedom flights. The US-organized airlifts transported nearly 300,000 Cuban refugees to Miami in the 1960s and early 1970s. “My parents met in the US and originally settled in New York City. Then, in the ’70s there was a big push in the Cuban community there to go to Miami.”

Cumplido Wilson herself was born and raised in Miami, gaining a lot of strength, she says, from the example set by her grandmother. “The idea of having to start over from scratch was common among my parents’ generation, pre-Castro,” she says. “My grandmother was a very strong, independent woman who came to the US as a single mom and spoke no English. She had been a bank executive in Cuba, so she learned English and found her way back into banking in the US.”

Cumplido Wilson says she learned perseverance and determination from her grandmother. “She taught me, by example, to figure out how to make things work in whatever situation you’re in,” says Cumplido Wilson.

Looking back at growing up in a tight-knit Cuban community, she says there are many things she appreciates more about her hometown. “Especially our older Cuban neighborhoods like Little Havana. Spending time there as an adult, I feel much more pride and connection to my roots. Growing up, in a mostly white part of Miami, all I wanted was to fit in, as most kids do. But now when I go back, I’m delighted to be surrounded by the music, food, and uncompromising Cuban-ness that informed so much of who I am without even realizing it.” 

Piano to Flute

Music was always a component of her Cuban upbringing—as it is in most Cuban households, Cumplido Wilson says. “We had all kinds of music growing up. My mom was a big fan of the old classic musicals, and my grandma was very into classical music. It was through her that I got my first exposure to opera and piano.” Cumplido Wilson remembers listening to piano music together, and it was her grandmother who got her started on the piano at age 6.

And then came the flute. “My mother says that when I was young, we went to a party that had a strolling flutist,” she says. “She’s convinced that got the notion of the flute into my head.” When Cumplido Wilson applied to an arts junior high school, she needed a second instrument, and that’s how it formally started.

“I think I was drawn to the acrobatics of the flute. It was pretty much the same with piano. Anything that was fast and flashy,” she laughs. “As I matured, of course, I started to enjoy the flute’s more expressive capabilities.”

Cumplido Wilson stresses the vital importance of supporting public education, with her own experience as an example. “The magnet schools I attended were public schools, and I would not be a musician today if I hadn’t had access to them,” she says.

Undergraduate studies on flute at the New England Conservatory led to graduate studies at the University of Southern California. Cumplido Wilson keeps busy with an active teaching and chamber music career beyond her orchestral positions, and is a member of the Urban Nocturnes, a chamber group in Phoenix, with an emphasis on community outreach programs.

Giving Back

Outreach in various forms features largely in Cumplido Wilson’s career, and she is proud of her track record of educational outreach—especially to underserved communities. She has served as a Young Musician’s Foundation mentor in Los Angeles and also worked with the Opening Minds through the Arts program in Tucson, Arizona.

Cumplido Wilson is an active participant in The Phoenix Symphony’s outreach programs, regularly performing at hospitals, memory care facilities, and homeless shelters. She also volunteers for Ryan House, a not-for-profit pediatric facility for children navigating life limiting illnesses and end-of-life journeys.

“Our activities run the gamut from pure entertainment to therapy,” she says. “In memory care or hospice facilities, for example, we play for people who are unable to get to concerts. Our job is to provide them with moments of beauty, peace, and respite.”

“With memory care and dementia patients, music memory is one of the last things to leave them. They may have lost the ability to connect with the outside world, but they remember songs from their childhood. I’ve seen people wake up and come alive to music they relate to.”

Audiences for The Phoenix Symphony’s education concerts for young people also include children with autism spectrum disorder, and Cumplido Wilson believes the music similarly breaks through to them in profound ways.

Crucial Diversity

Cumplido Wilson believes music is an effective means of expressing how art reflects society and that positively affects the culture in a community. “This is not a new idea. If you don’t see it, you don’t think it’s possible. If you grow up in a community that doesn’t have music, you’ll probably never see that as an option for yourself,” she says.

“When I play music in Latino communities, I represent their demographic in a world that they didn’t think was available to them. Then they see someone who looks like themselves, actually doing it,” says Cumplido Wilson.

The best example of this, in her own experience, was in Tucson. “In the Opening Minds through the Arts program, we worked in a school in a predominantly Latino community where many of the kids said they wanted to play the flute. It turns out that was because they hadn’t ever seen anyone who was brown like them play classical music. I think about that a lot whenever I take part in outreach.”

And of course, she adds, there is the well-known connection between music (and the arts in general) and increased academic achievement.

Fitness Goals

All of these activities are underpinned by a dedication to fitness. Although “dedication” might be an understatement. Cumplido Wilson has completed several marathons and is a proud finisher of Ironman Arizona in 2013.

She sees clear ties between physical fitness and instrumental music and encourages all her students to try activities that complement playing the flute. “As a wind player, our breath control is critical to our success,” she says. “The better your cardio health, the easier time you’ll have playing a wind instrument.”

Cumplido Wilson started running after she won the job in Phoenix. “The mental outlet became a game changer for me,” she says. “Then, I got into distance running, and that helped me understand what my body could do when it was pushed to its limit.”

She has also benefited from aerial arts and boxing. These skills, Cumplido Wilson believes, are transferable. “You can see the building blocks of what it takes to get yourself over the finish line and apply them to practicing, or to an audition. Suddenly you have a structure, and a plan of how to do things more efficiently.”

Learning your limits, she says, also helps prevent overtraining, which has clear ties to over-practicing. “Both lead to injuries,” she observes. Another concept in common with practicing is the idea of constantly improving.

Union Goals

Cumplido Wilson joined the AFM when she joined the Phoenix Symphony. “Being a union member helps us to better invest in the community we’re in,” she says. “It also strengthens our collective energy as musicians.” She believes Federation members are the beneficiaries of their predecessors’ hard work.

“We owe many of our union protections to the musicians before us, who made it possible for us to earn a living,” she says. “It’s imperative to uphold that work and adapt when necessary to industry changes. That’s the best way we can ensure our own future success.”

Recent experience in the Colorado Music Festival (CMF) has reinforced Cumplido Wilson’s belief in the strength of the union. The musicians of CMF, who gather in Boulder, Colorado, every summer for five weeks of orchestral and chamber music, achieved their first collective bargaining agreement in 2024 (see International Musician cover story, July 2024).

“Unionizing at CMF has given the entire organization peace of mind,” says Cumplido Wilson. “While the musicians’ rapport with CMF management was always positive, we now have a structure that protects that relationship, while also making us part of a large and strong community of union players.” She hopes the CMF musicians’ success in organizing will encourage other summer groups to follow suit.

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