AMY SCURRIA

Composer

AMY SCURRIA, PHD

Biography

Amy Scurria is a composer of orchestral, choral, chamber, and operatic works. The press has said she writes with a “powerful, musically poetic language” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), “her artistic personality is quite mature” … and “a tremendous technique infuses the music, but Scurria never uses it to cover up a paucity of ideas. She’s an honest workman – the real goods.” She is a “young composer with something to say” (Classical Net). 

Securing her first commission by age 19 and her first orchestral premiere by 24, Amy Scurria quickly became one of the premiere up and coming composers of her time. Her accomplishments include performances and commissions by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the LongLeaf Opera Company, Sigma Alpha Iota and Fort Wayne Philharmonic, the Richmond Symphony, the Bridgeport Symphony, the Vermont Youth Orchestra, Youth Pro Musica, the Shepherd College Concert Choir, and many others. She has had performances throughout the U.S., England, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, France, China, and Japan. Her studies include a bachelors in music composition from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, a masters in music composition from the Peabody Conservatory, composition studies at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ, and further study at La Schola Cantorum (currently named the EAMA) in Paris, France, and a PhD in music composition from Duke University.

Amy has been the recipient of twelve consecutive ASCAP awards, the Haddonfield Young Composers Competition, a Duke University Summer Research Fellowship, the Evan Frankel Fellowship, the Aleane Webb Dissertation Research Fellowship.

Her music is available through Theodore Presser Company and Adamo Press (Dr. Scurria's publishing company)

She believes that “Music is a powerful and unusual language that, when spoken authentically, can reach the deepest part of the human spirit."