Amanda Harberg, Ph.D.

About Amanda

Composer/pianist/educator Amanda Harberg’s music has been presented at major venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Verizon Hall, and Symphony Center. “She invigorates the brain and touches the soul,” says iconic American composer John Corigliano. “I love her work.”

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." 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. Her woodwind concerti have been performed on Gala Concerts at 2022 ClarinetFest® and the 2021 NFA Convention. Her Concerto for Viola and Orchestra was recorded on Naxos American Classics to critical acclaim, and has been played all over the world. Harberg's recital music is frequently required repertoire at competitions on regional and national levels.

Dr. Harberg lives in Boston, where she is an Associate Professor at the Berklee School of Music. To find out more, please visit her website. 

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.