Surveying the best of winds: flute connoisseurs find the best of their kind at convention.

For one weekend in August downtown L.A. echoed with the sweet sounds of flute music.

The source of the melodiousness was the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, where 1,500 flutists gathered to look at flutes, listen to flutes, play flutes and buy flutes. There were gold flutes, silver flutes, wooden flutes, bamboo flutes -- even a 12-foot-long flute.

The National Flute Association Inc.'s 20th Annual Convention, held August 20-23, gave flutists nationwide the chance to meet in one place, exchange ideas and resources, as well as listen to and be taught by the masters, said Sherry Kujala, the association's marketing director.

The convention featured dozens of workshops and concerts, among them "Hara, the Zen of Flute Playing" and

|Incomplete Text in Original Publication~

In another area, 125 vendors filled an exhibit hall with sounds of chromatic scales and etudes as passersby tried their skill on display models.

The entire flute family was represented -- from the piccolo, about a foot long, to the awesome 12-footer -- dubbed "the biggest flute in the world." In between there were C flutes, the conventional and most-popular model; altos, which are slightly larger and play lower notes than C flutes, and the bases, which play notes even lower than that.

There was even a workshop featuring "Indigenous Flutes of the Americas," wooden flutes born before metal flutes came around.

Down in the exhibit hall, vendors vied for the flutists' attention. Sam Wesley of Pittsburg, Calif., tried to sell "vertical flutes," which musicians hold like clarinets and blow into through a hole in the top. Vertical flutes range in price from $520, for one made of nickel and silver, to $1,005, for the most expensive solid-silver model.

Wesley admitted that during the four years he's been selling vertical flutes, he has only made two sales, one of them at this very convention.

Wesley wasn't the only innovator at the gathering. Leonard Lopatin, owner of North Attleborough, Mass.-based Lopatin Flute Co. tried to sell flutes with square holes instead of round ones.

These holes "are designed to give the air column easier, quicker venting, giving the flute great clarity and precise articulation," touts a Lopatin brochure on the subject.

The handmade, solid-silver, square-holed flutes go for about $6,000 apiece. Lopatin has sold just two of them so far in his flute-making career, but none at the convention. "I have a serious nibble, but it hasn't turned into a bite yet," he chimed.

Then there was Jim Schmidt, an engineer from Sanger, Calif., who is also doing some fiddling with the traditional flute design. Schmidt's invention is a new flute fingering system. The key placement on "The New Flute" is based on the chromatic scale to make fingering more efficient, Schmidt said. Traditional flute fingering is based around the C major scale.

The New Flute plays much faster and is more versatile, he noted, but it comes complete with $6,000 price tag.

Schmidt hasn't sold any New Flutes yet, but only because the design is ahead of its time, he claimed. "I'm doing something so radical and revolutionary that people don't even know how to deal with it yet," he said.

In one corner of the exhibition hall sat "the biggest flute in the world," made by Munich, Germany-based Max Hieber GMBH. The massive instrument is played while it stands vertically on its tail. The flute's tube curves downward at the top so the mouthpiece comes down to lip-level of the player, who must stand up to play.

It is made of silver-plated brass, sells for $15,000, and reaches notes three octaves below those reached by the traditional C flute.

Thomas Roberts, one of its makers, said he hasn't had any takers yet. "It's not the sort of thing you sell every week," he explained. The flute has been used in Japanese orchestras and by studio musicians for special effects.

There were other pricey flutes at the convention.

Jonathan Landell, from Vergennes, Vt., makes flutes by hand that range from $6,000 for the less expensive models to more than $20,000 for the most-expensive, solid-gold versions.

Flute making is pure passion for Landell, who declined to discuss numbers but said he barely scrapes by.

Florence Kline, who was looking at the flutes for sale and "loves the sound of gold," came to the convention to keep updated in the flute industry and to hear two renowned French flutists, Alain Marion and Angela Koregelos.

The convention was also attended by its share of child prodigies. Jasmine Loomis, a 17-year-old from Flagstaff, Ariz., has already been playing for 10 years. Her proficiency was evident as she tooted away on a display flute in the exhibit hall.

Loomis -- who was preparing to buy a new piccolo for $1,450, said this was not her first flute convention and it would not be her last.