Postdoctoral Lecturer in Collaborative Piano Barbara Noyes collaborates with musicians in a wide variety of genres including duo works, chamber music, opera, orchestral ensembles, new music ensembles and musical theatre productions. She previously served as collaborative pianist for Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Alongside mezzo soprano Claire McCahan—also a College of Music alumna—Noyes co-founded Horizon Duo, a voice-piano duo dedicated to the celebration of American art song and creative programming of contemporary and classic repertoire. In 2022, Horizon Duo won first prize at the National Association of Teachers of Singing Artist Awards (NATSAA) competition in New York City and was a semi-finalist in the Franz Schubert & Modern Music Lied Duo competition in Graz, Austria.
Noyes has been a collaborative pianist at festivals such as Meadowmount School of Music, Music Academy of the West, the Aspen Music Festival and the Collaborative Piano Institute. In 2018, she made her Carnegie Hall debut with oboist Kristen Weber at Weill Recital Hall. An ardent lover of contemporary repertoire, Noyes’ doctoral thesis project culminated in a recorded album of André Previn’s music for voice and piano duo, bringing to the concert hall Previn’s unheralded art song library.
Noyes earned a Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music in collaborative piano at the University of Colorado Boulder College of Music, studying with Margaret McDonald and Alexandra Nguyen. She previously earned a Bachelor of Music in composition from Willamette University where she studied composition and piano performance with John Peel and Anita King. Noyes also studied French language and cinema studies in Paris at the Sorbonne Université and the Institut Catholique, as well as innovation in music technology at IRCAM’s ManiFeste summer academy for composers.