Instructor in Music Performance Barbara Phillips-Farley teaches,
practices, performs, and researches. A pianist by training
and a scholar through her education. Phillips-Farley combines
these passions. She is learning two Shostakovich chamber works,
a quintet and a sonata for viola and piano, to read with the Alexander
String Quartet, whose members serve as quartet-in-residence at St.
Lawrence each year. She’s also working on a book
review of a biography of Tin Pan Alley’s lyricist Johnny Mercer.
Phillips-Farley has had her share of memorable experiences as a
faculty member at St. Lawrence. She developed courses in
subjects she loves, such as Tin Pan Alley songs, Schubert lieder,
and the milieu of Clara and Robert Schumann. “Helping
students to play ‘by ear’, taking students to their first
orchestra concert at the National Arts Center in Ottawa, Canada and
having students discover something brilliant in a piece of classical
music--all of these experiences are very fulfilling.” Even
after students graduate, Phillips-Farley maintains relationships
with the students and also some parents. “The four years that
we have with these remarkable folks are, in some cases, the
start of a lovely, long friendship.”
Phillips-Farley attended Oberlin College and University of Iowa for
her undergraduate and graduate studies.
