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.