Biography
Amber Ferenz is a nonbinary, queer bassoonist and award-winning composer and arranger. Inspired deeply by the beauty, magic and mystery of the natural world, they often write pieces that weave together melodies and healing songs given by Nature with their own musical ideas. They also delight in tackling emotionally challenging material, and feel that music is a vehicle for the universal energies of transformation, catharsis, and healing.
Amber was commissioned in the fall of 2024 by the Asheville Symphony Orchestra to write a piece honoring all those whose lives were changed by Hurricane Helene. “The Things We Say to Death” will be ’25-’26’s season opener, world-premiered in Asheville on September 20, 2025, with the composer performing on second bassoon.
Their most recent compositions include “Ad Astra Per Aspera” for the NY-based chamber group Chrystallum, partially funded by the NY Arts Council of the Finger Lakes; “Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra”, which received its World Premiere with the Western Piedmont Symphony in Hickory, NC on May 16, 2024, with the composer as the featured soloist; and “Burn It Down!”, a bassoon trio with piano that delves into sacred female rage.
Other recent works are “Bloom” for oboe and bassoon duo, “Two Paintings by Meryl Lefkovich” for wind quartet and piano, “From the Mountains to the Sea” for reed quintet, commissioned by Burnt Reeds for their Homegrown Melodies project, “Once More Into the Light” and “Unfinished Conversations” for bassoon and piano, “Tales From the Grove” for bassoon and piano or harp, “Wood, Water, and Roses: Women’s Medicine for Difficult Times” for both solo bassoon and English horn, and “Yellow Poplar with Birdsong” for solo bassoon, as well as “Tall Tales” for bassoon quartet.
“These Four Directions” for wind quartet was an official selection for performance at the 2022 Music By Women Festival in Columbus, Mississippi. It was commissioned by Winston-Salem based Elektra Winds in 2021, and is their first piece for wind quartet. In early 2023, * “These Four Directions”* was chosen by the Silent Voices Festival in Bimidji, Minnesota as a winning selection.
Amber is a founding member of Elektra Winds and Queen City Winds as well as the bassoon and harp collective Voices In the Wood. They are second bassoonist with the Asheville Symphony and the former third/contra bassoonist for the Greensboro Symphony. They serve on the Board of the Bassoon Chamber Music Composition Competition (BCMCC) and have been the Camp Coordinator for the Glickman-Popkin Bassoon Camp since 2007. TrevCo Music publishes Amber’s entire wind music catalogue.
Recordings of Amber’s work can be found on the Voices In the Wood albums “New Paths in Old Woods” and “Winter Woods” and on “Compostela”, recorded by Eric van der veer Varner.