Patricia Barber

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 and Glenn Miller. 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 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 honours

She was given a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003 in the field of Creative Arts – Music Composition.

She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.