Composer Leigha Amick believes that music has the potential to reflect on both the current and the timeless human experience, to provide grounds for intellectual fascination, and to quench the need for emotional expression.  Her compositions have been performed by ensembles including the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, the Boulder Philharmonic, the Orlando Philharmonic, the Indiana University New Music Ensemble, St. Martin’s Voices, the Playground Ensemble, NOTUS Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, and the Ars Nova Singers.  She has studied at summer programs including the Aspen Music Festival, European American Musical Alliance (EAMA), and the IRCAM Contemporary Music Creation and Critique program through CIEE.  EAMA awarded her the highest recognition in Counterpoint, Harmony, and Solfège.

In 2022, New Voices Opera premiered Rhiannon’s Condemnation: a one-act chamber opera based on a medieval Welsh legend from The Mabinogion for which Leigha wrote both the libretto and the music.

Amick is an active performer of new music as a violinist and soprano.  At Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, she performed with NOTUS under the direction of Dominick DiOrio, and in 2018, she sang in IU Opera and Ballet Theater’s production of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs.  While in Indiana, she studied voice with Judith Malafronte and Julia Bentley.

As two-term president of IU’s Student Composer Association, she assisted in organizing the 2019 Double Exposure collaboration between IU’s film and composition departments and the 2018 Society of Composers, Inc. Student National Conference.  She also organized the 2017 New Art New Music concert in collaboration with the Grunwald Gallery of Art.

In addition to her musical endeavors, Leigha is a former Irish Step dancer, and danced at the 2021 North American Irish Dance Championships.  

Amick is currently a graduate student at the Curtis Institute of Music where she holds the Jimmy Brent Fellowship and studies with Amy Beth Kirsten, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Nick DiBerardino, Richard Danielpour, and Steve Mackey.  She received her Bachelor of Music in composition with highest distinction from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, completing minors in mathematics and electronic music.  At IU, she studied composition with David Dzubay, Aaron Travers, Claude Baker, Sven-David Sandström, and Don Freund.  Before college, she studied with Daniel Kellogg and John Drumheller of the University of Colorado Boulder.