Barbara Kolb

Barbara Kolb ( born February 10, 1939 in Hartford / Connecticut ) is an American composer.

Piston studied at the Hartt College of Music of the University of Hartford composition and clarinet with Lukas Foss and Gunther Schuller. She won a number of scholarships and was the first woman to receive the American Prix de Rome ( 1969-71 ) for composition. A Fulbright scholarship allowed her a year of study in Vienna.

From 1979 to 1982 she was Artistic Director of Contemporary Music at the Street Music School Settlement, where she organized the concert series Music New to New York. 1982-83 she spent nine months at IRCAM, and composed the commissioned work Millefoglie for chamber ensemble and tape. After the premiere in Paris the work was inter alia listed at the Tokyo Summer Festival of the Tokyo Sinfonietta Kunitaka Kokaji in Amsterdam, Brussels, Cologne, Dallas, Washington DC, Gelsenkirchen, Helsinki, Liège, Montreal, 1996.

From 1984 to 1985 piston has held a visiting professor of composition at the Eastman School of Music. The following year she created with support from the Library of Congress a program for music theory lessons for the blind and physically handicapped. One of her most successful compositions was her Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra, which was premiered in 1992 by the Theater Chamber Players at the Kennedy Center.

On behalf of Elisa Monte Dance Company, New York Moonglow was written for saxophone, trumpet, strings and percussion, for the bassoonist Stefano Canuti she composed sidebars, a duet for bassoon and piano. Virgin Mother Creatrix for choir a cappella by Hildegard von Bingen was premiered at the International Festival of Women Composers of the University of Pennsylvania in 1998.

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• American composer
• Born in 1939
• Woman