Barbara Higbie (born 1958) is an American Grammy-nominated, Bammies Award–winning pianist, composer, violinist, singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. She has played on over 100 CDs, including songs with Carlos Santana and Bonnie Raitt. The first female instrumentalist signed to Windham Hill Records, she also recorded solo or duo projects for the Olivia, Second Wave, and Slowbaby labels. Higbie is a folk, jazz, pop, and fusion singer-songwriter noted for her highly melodic jazz/folk performances. She has toured nationally and internationally since the early 1980s and has performed with Bonnie Raitt, Terry Riley, Pete Seeger, the Kronos Quartet, Jaron Lanier, Cris Williamson, Holly Near, Teresa Trull, and Ferron.
In Paris, Higbie met Darol Anger, with whom she began a fruitful musical collaboration. Together they recorded the album Tideline (1982), one of the early successful records of Windham Hill.
In 1984, she co-lead a group for a live album recording at the Montreux Jazz Festival, which then became the successful group Montreux, with Darol Anger, Mike Marshall, Todd Phillips, Andy Narrell, and Michael Manring. She recorded a critically-acclaimed album titled Unexpected with singer Teresa Trull in 1983, which was included in The Boston Globe's Guide to Best Albums of 1983. Higbie and Trull collaborated again on the 1998 release Playtime. Since 1990, Higbie has released a number of solo albums on the Windham Hill and Slowbaby labels. Her first solo album, 1990's Signs of Life (Windham Hill) was named one of the top ten albums of 1990 by The Washington Post.[citation needed] She is known as a versatile and soulful musician.
Higbie maintains an active touring schedule, both as a solo artist and as a member of the Windham Hill Winter Solstice ensemble. She has performed on all seven continents and in all 50 states. As of 2019, Higbie is co-chair of the nonprofit Board of the Society for the Preservation of Traditional Music (Freight and Salvage) in Berkeley, California. She has served on the board of the Freight on and off since 2005.
