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Barbara York née Spence (23 February 1949 – 6 November 2020) was a Canadian-American composer and pianist. She is noted for her many contributions to chamber and solo repertoire for low brass instruments like tuba, trombone, and euphonium.
Barbara York was born in Winnipeg to Edith (née Pitblado) and Howard Spence and was the youngest of their three children. She began taking piano lessons when she was around four years old, and then learned cello in middle and high school. She began composing original music as early as age seven. She later claimed, "In first grade, I wrote an essay about what I wanted to be when I grew up: a music teacher... I never wanted to be anything else."
York attended McGill University and graduated with a Bachelor's degree in music when she was twenty years old. After graduating, she worked at the Manitoba Theater School as a teacher, but soon after moved to Toronto. For the next ten or so years, York worked in theater, performing a variety of roles including arranging, directing, and composing. She moved to Kansas City in 1993, and focused on her career as a collaborative pianist while also working as an elementary school music teacher and church/school choir accompanist. She was hired to accompany tubist Michael Fischer at a Pittsburg State University student recital, and was immediately fascinated by the sound of the solo tuba. She learned how to write for tuba based on her time accompanying performers and from consultation orchestration textbooks, and then the rest, according to her, was "pure instinct." York asked Fischer if he would mind if she wrote a piece for him, and her very first work for tuba, Sea Dreams, was the result. This piece later became a required piece for ITEA's 2004 Young Artists competition.
York died at her home in Pittsburg, Kansas in 2020 from pulmonary fibrosis.
Barbara York (at the time Barbara Spence Potter) won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Score in 1981 for a production entitled Colette. A recording of her work A Butterfly in Time nominated for Children's Album of the Year at the 2006 Juno Awards.
Conversations, York's work for euphonium, saxophone, and piano, won the Euphonium Chamber Division of the International Tuba Euphonium Association Harvey Phillips Award for Composition in 2006. She was the first woman to be awarded the ITEA Lifetime Achievement Award, making her one of three woman who have now earned the honor (alongside Constance Weldon and Mary Ann Craig).
Between 2017 and 2021, York's works comprised 80% of the music by women composers performed by on recitals at ITEA events.
When asked about her perception of her legacy, York stated:
“My greatest idea of success would be that I was still being played, that I would still be, in some way, part of standard repertoire for people. Because in that sense, it means that I would have some legacy. I feel like my music has been useful to people, especially low brass players, in terms of filling in holes in the repertoire, and also useful to people in terms of giving them an expression for things and emotions that they didn’t have an expression for. Other than that, I have no idea if I even have a legacy.”
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