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Amanda Harberg, Ph.D.
About Amanda
Composer Amanda Harberg’s music has been presented at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Verizon Hall, Symphony Center, Bargemusic. In 2021, Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted the premiere of her Piccolo Concerto with soloist Erica Peel and the Philadelphia Orchestra, calling it "an extraordinary addition to the limited repertoire." In 2022, her Clarinet Concerto was premiered at the gala concert of ClarinetFest® 2022 by the Reno Philharmonic with YaoGuang Zhai and Maestro Jason Altieri. A widely commissioned composer, her music is published by Presser and has been recognized by a Fulbright Hays Fellowship, Juilliard's Peter Mennin Prize, two New Jersey Council on the Arts Fellowships, a New York State Council on the Arts fellowship, a MacDowell Colony summer residency, and nine NFA Newly Published Music awards. In 2021 she was the International Clarinet Association’s “Composer of the Month”, and her woodwind works have been selected as required repertoire for over eleven national and international competitions since 2022. Her Concerto for Viola and Orchestra was recorded on Naxos American Classics in 2017 to critical acclaim.
Harberg lives with her family in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, where she is the Composer-in-Residence with the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra. She teaches at Rutgers University and Interlochen Center for the Arts.
My primary goal as a teacher is to inspire students to explore their creative processes and artistic potential. In my deeply student-centered approach to composition lessons, the students' individualized composition projects are used as the basis for honing their abilities to clearly define their musical ideas, and to realize these ideas into powerful forms. In engaging with the compositional process, the teaching of notation, melody, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, texture and timbre all arise necessarily in the context of their music, and we address and explore these issues in the lessons as ways to expand the composer's toolbox.
-2021 World Premiere of Piccolo Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra Digital Stage
-2021 Piccolo Concerto presented at National Flute Convention Gala Concerto Concert
-2021 National Flute Association Newly Published Music Award winner
-2020 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship
-2020 Winner of two National Flute Association Newly Published Music Awards
-2016 National Flute Association Newly Published Music Award winner
-2016 Women's Philharmonic Advocacy Grant
-2014 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship
-2013 Mellon Foundation Grant for Albany Symphony Dogs of Desire Commission
-Women's Philharmonic Advocacy Grant
-2013 Springside School/Chestnut Hill Academy Outstanding Young Alumni Award
-2012 Meet the Composer Creative Connections Grant
-2011 Live Music For Dance Grant
-2010 Meet the Composer Creative Connections Grant
-2009 Dodge Foundation Grant for Harmonium Choral Society Commission
-2000 New York State Council on the Arts Fellowship
-1999 New York Youth Symphony's "First Music" Prize
-1999 Commissioned by the Juilliard School’s “Piano Century” Festival to represent piano music in the 1990's
-1998 American Composers Orchestra Whittaker Reading Session
-1997 MacDowell Colony Summer Residency
-1996/7 Morse Teaching Fellowship: The Juilliard School
-1995 Peter Mennin Prize for outstanding undergraduate accomplishment
-1995 Fulbright/Hays Fellowship for a year of study with Frederic Rzewski at the Conservatoire Royale de Liege, Belgium
B.M., Music Composition - The Juilliard School
M.M., Music Composition - The Juilliard School
Ph.D. - Rutgers University