Hannah A. Barnes

Full Bio

Hannah A. Barnes is a composer and conductor whose work centres on crafting structured yet dynamic, multi-faceted musical worlds characterized by mercurial, off-kilter, and seemingly incompatible materials which interact to create distinctive, expressive worlds inhabited by performers and listeners. Barnes’ main concerns relate to (re)defining Modernism in the twenty-first century as a means of imagining and embodying alternative ways of being. Her music focuses on questions of multiplicity, material identity and behavior, and perception of time and memory. She thinks of her pieces in some combination of externalized parts of herself, plants, rooms and thresholds of an interconnected building, and wild animals. Barnes grew up as a trumpet player in a musical family and also learned traditional Irish music and dancing, all of which continue to influence her music in unexpected ways.

Currently a DMus candidate at McGill University studying composition with Prof. Philippe Leroux, Hannah completed degrees in composition (MMus w/Distinction ’21, BMus High Honours ’19) from DePaul University, with additional studies in conducting with Prof. Michael Lewanski. Barnes' work has been performed in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Italy, Japan, Greece, and Australia by ensembles and musicians including Ensemble Dal Niente, Ensemble Musikfabrik, fellows of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Quatuor Bozzini, Quatuor Mémoire with soprano Rebecca Gray, OSSIA Ensemble, the Atlanta Contemporary Music Collective, pianists Ian Pace and Alex Raineri, oboist Kyle Bruckmann, percussionists Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, Kyle Flens, Luke Helker, and Alexander Garde, guitarist Jesse Langen, hornist Tarre Nelson, duos Garden Unit (sax./clr.) and Flannau Duo (pno,/perc.), violinists Bailey Wantuch, Jennifer Gersten, Meggie Lacombe, and Karl Jõgi, violist Jing Jen, piano automaton engineer Winfried Ritsch, McGill University's Contemporary Music Ensemble, DePaul University's Ensemble 20+, and others. She was a composition fellow at the DePaul and Dal Niente Summer Residency for New Music (2020), the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (2021), the Yarn/Wire Summer Institute (2022), the Darmstadt Summer Courses (2021, 2023, 2025), the Musikfabrik Virtual Brass Academy (2025), Impuls Academy (2025), and outHEAR New Music Week (2026). Recent projects include a 25-minute string quartet for Quatuor Mémoire with soprano Rebecca Gray setting poetry by H.D. with support from the Montréal Conseil des Artes, a work for Prof. Winfried Ritsch's piano automaton commissioned by outHEAR New Music Week, a large ensemble work for McGill University's Contemporary Music Ensemble, and a viola version of her piece "Selenetrope," originally composed at the Darmstadt Summer Courses. Upcoming commissions include works for Boston-based duo Lamnth (violin + cimbalom) for premiere in November 2026, Dovetail Duo (doubl bell trumpet and viola), electric guitarist Matt Sargent, feedback tenor saxophone duo Weather Vane, pianist Ian Pace, and natural hornist Isaac Shieh and harpsichord. 

Barnes' work for oboe and electronics, “Dis/inte/gration” (2019, rev. 2020) was recorded by Kyle Bruckmann and included on his album of rivers, released March 2024. She released her debut portrait album, Negative Capability: Works by Hannah A. Barnes (BluePontoon), in December 2024 including performances by Ensemble Dal Niente, Kyle Flens, Jesse Langen, Garden Unit, and DePaul University’s Ensemble 20+. Her work has been acknowledged in the Chicago Reader and “Best of Bandcamp,” selected in calls for scores in the United States, Canada and Austria, played on impulsradio (Graz/Helsinki), performed at venues including CNMAT, CIRMMT, and Chicago's Symphony Center, and awarded an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Awards honourable mention for her work “five images.”

Barnes founded the "rhythm is image" new music initiative after being struck by the inexplicable and insatiable desire to perform Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie I in 2019. She organizes, conducts, and performs in concerts, emphasizing experimental performance practice and advocating for “difficult” music. rhythm is image has performed in Chicago, Montréal, Omaha (Nebraska), and Fayetteville (Arkansas) as parts of concert series and festivals (Ear Taxi, Frequency Series, Omaha Under the Radar, and SHE Festival of Women in Music), including works by Grisey, Saunders, D. Bithell, Lucier, K. Suzuki, Jodlowski, Scelsi, Fujikura, Cage, as well as pieces by Barnes and those of her Chicago and Montréal peers.

Teaching is also important to Hannah; she has taught theory and aural skills to high schoolers at the Chicago Music Academy, music majors at DePaul University (as Lecturer of Music Theory from 2021-23), and various students at McGill University (as Lecturer of Music Theory, 2024). While at McGill, she served as president of Le Vivier InterUniversitaire and the McGill Association of Student Composers, and Vice President of the Music Graduate Student Society. She also was a Writing Fellow through the Graduate Writing Centre in 2024-25, developing and implementing initiatives to support Schulich School of Music graduate students with their written academic milestones.

Outside of composing, she practices Pilates and her baseball swing, studies German, French, and Ar Rince Céilí, and walks her terrier, Kaylee. Her favorite books are James Joyce's Ulysses and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

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