Amy Lynn Barber has had a distinguished international career as a performer, teacher, and arts administrator. Her performing and teaching activities have taken her to five continents. Although she has played with orchestras in the US and Europe, her primary interest is contemporary solo and chamber music. She has worked with many composers and is known for innovative programming and presentation of new music to a broad audience. She has commissioned, premiered and recorded over 50 new solo and chamber works from European and American composers.
Amy is Professor Emerita of Music and former Dean of the School of Music at DePauw University and has served on the faculties of the Interlochen Arts Academy, Prague Conservatory and Texas Wesleyan University. In Prague, she founded The Percussion Plus Project, which performed throughout central Europe for years and is an ensemble-in-residence at DePauw University. Amy was also a co-founder, with Prague Symphony percussionist David Rehor, of the percussion duo Synergy in Prague.
During her many years living in Europe, she was a guest professor at music schools, summer percussion courses, and festivals. She has also presented master classes and workshops at universities throughout the U.S. and at various PAS Days of Percussion, and has been an adjudicator at many competitions in Europe and the US. Ensembles under her direction have performed at PASIC, Euro-PASIC, the Music Teachers National Association Convention, and Music Educators Conventions in Massachusetts, Texas, and Indiana. Her DePauw Percussion Ensemble toured in Central Europe, Brazil, and China.
As an orchestral percussionist, Amy was a member of the Slovenian Philharmonic and played with the Prague Symphony, as well as with orchestras in New England, Texas, and Michigan. She has performed and recorded with many outstanding conductors, including Carlos Kleiber, Simone Young, Seiji Ozawa, Kurt Masur, Jiri Belohlavek, Marko Letonja, Milan Horvat, Charles Mackerras, JoAnn Falletta, and many others.
She was the organizer of the Prague Percussion Days, and of several international festivals of the music of George Crumb in Europe and the U.S. For her “activities in contemporary music and promotion of Czech-American cultural relations,” Amy was awarded the National Music Prize of the Czech Music Council and made an honorary member of the council. She was also the first foreign musician elected to membership in Umelecka Beseda. She has twice been awarded Fulbright professorships for research and teaching abroad and has also received grants from IREX, the NEH and many other government and private foundations. In 2007, she received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Boston University School of Music.
Amy earned a BM from Boston University, as a student of Boston Symphony member Thomas Gauger, a MM from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as a student of Peter Tanner, and a DMA from the Hartt School of Music, where she studied with PAS Hall of Famer Alexander Lepak. She also studied marimba with Leigh Howard Stevens, Japanese percussion with Semba Kokun, and Brazilian percussion with Guilherme Gonsalves.
Amy is an artist/clinician for Yamaha and Zildjian. She currently lives on Cape Cod, where she has performed as a recital soloist, and with her ensembles The Percussion Plus Project, Xylophonia, and Out of Africa, and also maintains a teaching studio.