About
Amy started formal music lessons at the age of seven with composer-pianist Doris Deitch in NYC. They worked ten hours a week on standard repertoire, improvisation, theory, analysis, and composition. This immersion provided the foundation for Amy’s desire to build a “Beyond the Boundaries” life in music where lines of delineation blur and
imagination has the freedom to prosper.
In 1981 Amy worked as a Master Teacher for the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education in NYC and its affiliates. There, she met educator and philosopher, Maxine Greene who introduced her to “experiential education”
which involves new ways for audiences to get closer to music through participatory workshops.
Decades later, Amy continues her career as an award winning composer, pianist, presenter and educator whocreates and performs music for the concert stage, jazz ensemble, film, and television.
From “The Computer Music Journal”: “The most virtuosic performance of the day was turned in by Amy Rubin, whose keyboard performance of her “One World” was a smorgasbord of mixed meters, polyrhythms and references to many Third World rhythms, timbres, and forms within the context of the composer’s Western sensibility.”
From composer/pianist Egberto Gismonti: “Amy is a brilliant pianist! Her transcriptions and concept of my music bring me a big excitement.”
From “Classics Today”: “Spiked with blues, jazz, African drumming patterns and Latin dance rhythms... Rubin’s music is appealing and often playful. Her intricate passagework spins out like a nimble improvisation.
In the last few decades Amy has toured her innovative INFORMANCES, a unique mixture of live performance, story
telling, multi media and audience participation to thousands of people throughout the US and abroad, as a presenter
for Humanities WA and multiple international cruise lines.
Amy was a Senior Fulbright Professor In Ghana and has taught full time at the Cornish College of the Arts,
Fairleigh Dickinson University and SUNY at Stony brook. She directed the first conference of Ghanaian music at
the American Embassy in Ghana, produced a three month festival, “Close Encounters with Music Around the
World”. at Fairleigh Dickinson U, NJ, and holds a Certificate in Teaching World Music from the Smithsonian Institute.
Asociación Dominicana de Académicos Fulbright
“Your piano concert, “Music from Jazz Sources" touched every one who had the opportunity to hear your brilliant
interpretations of the American composer George Gershwin and the Brazilian Egberto Gismonti. Your own
compositions reflected your inner strength, pervasive feelings and your love of beauty and humankind.”
Amy’s grants and awards include: The Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship, the King County Arts Commission
Special Project Award, the Mid- Atlantic Music Grant, the Seattle Arts Commission Grant, the National Endowment
Grant, the Yale Distinguished Alumni Award. Grants from Jack Straw Recordings, Meet the Composer, World Music
Institute and Cary Trust.
Amy’s teaching studio, and collaborations continue to welcome those who dance to the beat of a different drummer,
as they explore what lies “Beyond the Boundaries”.