Patricia Barber (born November 8, 1955) is an American songwriter, composer, singer, and pianist.

Biography

Barber's father Floyd was a jazz saxophonist who played with

Bud Freeman Lawrence "Bud" Freeman (April 13, 1906 – March 15, 1991) was an American jazz musician, bandleader, and composer, known mainly for playing tenor saxophone, but also the clarinet. Biography In 1922, Freeman and some friends from high sch ...

and

Glenn Miller Alton Glen Miller (March 1, 1904 – December 15, 1944) was an American big band founder, owner, conductor, composer, arranger, trombone player and recording artist before and during World War II, when he was an officer in the United States Arm ...

. She played saxophone and piano from a young age, sang in musicals in high school, and studied piano at the University of Iowa in the early 1970s. From there Barber went to Chicago and began performing regularly in bars and clubs. She won a Guggenheim Fellowship in

music composition Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called ...

in March 2003, an unusual accomplishment for someone working in the field of popular songwriting. The Guggenheim allowed her to devote time to a song cycle based on Ovid’s ''Metamorphoses''. She is married to musicologist Martha Feldman.

Awards and honors

* She was given a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 2003 in the field of Creative Arts – Music Composition. * She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.

Discography

An asterisk (*) indicates that the year is that of release. Source:

References

External links

Patricia Barber collection
at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

's live music archive
Review of Mythologies by JazzChicago.net
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barber, Patricia 1955 births Living people Post-bop singers Post-bop pianists Cabaret singers American blues singer-songwriters American jazz singers American jazz songwriters American jazz pianists American lesbian musicians LGBT people from Illinois LGBT people from Nebraska LGBT singers from the United States LGBT songwriters American women jazz singers People from South Sioux City, Nebraska Blue Note Records artists 20th-century American pianists 20th-century American women pianists Jazz musicians from Nebraska 21st-century American pianists 21st-century American women pianists 20th-century LGBT people 21st-century LGBT people Singer-songwriters from Nebraska Antilles Records artists Concord Records artists Women jazz pianists