ACCOMPANIST

Amy Wurtz

Amy Wurtz is a Chicago-based pianist and composer. Originally from California, Amy has lived and worked in the Bay Area, Southern California, throughout the Midwest, South America and Europe. Her musical pursuits include composing, solo performing, chamber and choral performing, teaching, and accompanying. Amy is a fervent advocate for new music and the community that surrounds and supports it, and is a staunch performer, composer, and curator of new music.

Amy graduated summa cum laude from the University of Redlands with degrees in Piano Performance and Creative Writing. She then went on to earn dual Masters Degrees from the University of Minnesota in Piano Performance and Music Composition. She studied piano with Alexander Braginsky and Louanne Long and composition with Judith Lang Zaimont and Alexandra Pierce. Her study of piano has taken her twice to Argentina, where she spent a year of intensive study with master teacher Inés Gómez-Carrillo. Her composition projects have taken her all the way to Germany, where she lived and worked for over two years as she produced, directed, conducted and rehearsed her own 75-minute work, Message from the Soul, for chorus, orchestra, narrator and soloists, with performances in Gothenburg, London, and Düsseldorf.

Since 2008, Amy has been living and working in Chicago. She works in a variety of capacities, running an independent piano studio, serving as Music Director for Hemenway United Methodist Church, and working as lead accompanist for the Sounds Good! and Good Memories choirs, which serve older adults and those with early-onset memory loss. Currently President, Amy has been a board member of New Music Chicago for a decade and has held various roles within the organization, including Vice President and Membership Chair. In 2018 Amy curated and produced the Impromptu Fest, a festival celebrating the membership of New Music Chicago with 8 performances at the Chopin Theater. Amy again curated and produced the second Impromptu Fest in 2019, with 8 more performances, this time at Guarneri Hall, showcasing the broad range of musicianship of New Music Chicago member artists and ensembles. Amy also curates the New Music at the Green Mill concert series each Spring, where local performers and audience members gather in this iconic Chicago music center to hear new and experimental music.

Amy also performs as part of the Wurtz-Berger Duo, a cello-piano collaboration which has recently released a CD, produced by Amy, Cello Dances at Night, containing Amy’s work Songs and Dances, which was commissioned by the 2016 Ear Taxi Festival, as well as works by Chicago composers George Flynn and Sebastian Huydts.

As a composer, Amy has won various prizes and commissions for her work, including the National Federation of Music Clubs, Illinois Arts Council Grant, and the American Music Project. Her compositions have been performed by Zeitgeist, the Chicago Composers’ Orchestra, Access Contemporary Music, and others. Her first CD, Amy Wurtz String Quartets, was recorded by the Chicago Q Ensemble and is available on her website, www.amywurtz.com.