AMY LYNN BARBER

solo concert

Amy Lynn Barber, born in Massachusetts, U.S.A., is a well-known soloist and ensemble player, and the only percussionist specialising in the music of Central Europe. Her percussion teachers have included Leigh Howard Stevens, Alexander Lepak, Peter Tanner, and Thomas Gauger. She graduated from Boston University, took a master's degree at the University of Massachusetts and a Ph.D. in percussion and music history from the Hartt School of Music. She was professor of percussion at the Prague Conservatoire for five years, and also founded also the Prague Percussion Project. She has been a soloist  at the Prague Spring Festival and the Zagreb Biennale, and has played and taught at many other international festivals  and  seminars in the United States, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Croatia and Poland. Her percussion ensembles have been selected to perform at the International Percussion Convention in the U.S., and at the European Percussion Convention in Germany. She is also the director of the Percussion Plus chamber concerts which have premiered and recorded many new works by Central European composers.

As a promoter  and  organiser on behalf of contemporary music, she has organised international festivals (including the annual Prague Percussion Days, George Crumb, and the Percussion Plus concert  series in both  Prague and  Ljubljana).  In January 1996, she was the organiser and director of the international conference "Contemporary Music in Central Europe: Problems and Possibilities", sponsored by the Soros Foundation, which included participants from Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia. She is also an active teacher of percussion and contemporary music. She taught for 3 years at the International Summer Percussion Courses in Bydgoszcz, Poland and at the Percussion Seminar in Grožnjan, Croatia.

She has won many awards for her work in contemporary music. (Fulbright  Professor in Prague, IREX Research Fellow, honorary member of the Czech National Music Council, first non-Czech musician to be elected a member of Urnelecka Beseda etc.)

She has been living in Europe since 1989 (in Prague), and in 1995 she moved to Ljubljana, where she has been a member of the Slovene Philharmonic.

Her concert in Ljubljana will feature contemporary works for the marimba and vibraphone in a variety of styles ranging from atonal music to minimalism and jazz. The programme includes compositions by American composers David Maslanka, Christopher Deane, Paul Smadbeck, Frederic Rzewski and Gary Burton, and the Slovene composer Janez Matičič. Also included will be a work by the Slovene-American composer Paul Sifler.

PROGRAMME:  

MY LADY WHITE  (THREE SONGS FOR SOLO MARIMBA), COMPOSER: DAVID MASLANKA;