Hailed for her "rich sonority" by the Portland Press Herald, cellist Amy Gillingham has given performances across the eastern United States, Canada, Latin America, and Italy. Currently an active solo, chamber, and orchestral performer, with performances broadcast across Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts, and New York, she is also currently on the music theory faculty at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. Having earned the degrees of Doctorate of Musical Arts and Master of Music from the University of Cincinnati and Bachelor of Music from the North Carolina School of the Arts, her major teachers have included Yehuda Hanani, Marcy Rosen, and James Fiste. Interested in both performance and analysis, and having served as a graduate teaching assistant in both cello and music theory at the College-Conservatory of Music, she wrote a doctoral dissertation document entitled, “Cultivating Perception: Bridging Schematic Patterns and Audience in Franz Joseph Haydn’s Violoncello Concertos,” under the mentorship of music theorist, Steven J. Cahn.

Dr. Gillingham has appeared as soloist with the Central Michigan University Symphony Orchestra twice, as solo cellist in a regional premiere of Tan Dun’s Water Passion after St. Matthew, as a featured artist at the 2009 International WASBE conference performing Ibert’s Concerto for Cello, and as soloist with the Miami Valley Symphony Orchestra, where she was the winner of the Clarke J. Haines Concerto Competition. Her recent chamber music performances included engagements at the Close Encounters with Music chamber music series in the Berkshires, where she performed with cellist Yehuda Hanani, violinist Stefan Milenkovich, and pianist Adam Neiman, at the International Midwest Clinic in Chicago, and at the Chamber Music Cincinnati concert series, where she gave a regional premiere of Steve Reich’s Double Sextet with the Grammy award-winning group eighth blackbird. As an orchestral musician, she has performed with the Kentucky Symphony, Lebanon Philharmonic (OH), Middletown Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Western Piedmont Symphony, Midland Symphony, and Alma Symphony Orchestras.

Most recently, Dr. Gillingham was a contributor at the 2010 International Viola Congress, where she was a member of the orchestra and also an exhibitor of instruments. Her upcoming engagements include a lecture at the 2010 National College Music Society Conference in Minneapolis, MN, where she will be delivering a paper entitled, “The Curious Case of Franz Schubert’s Quartet for Flute, Guitar, Viola, and Violoncello: It’s Controversial Identity and the Unique Contributions of Both Wenzel Matiegka and Franz Schubert.”