Alexis C. Lamb (b. 1993) is a composer, percussionist, and educator who is interested in fostering communities of mindful music-making, particularly through the medium of storytelling. Her recent musical endeavors incorporate her love of research and oral histories into sonic commentaries that often enable the performers to offer their own improvisations and responses. Lamb’s music has been regarded as having “sparkling optimism throughout,” and as “a pleasure in its own right” (I Care If You Listen).
As a composer, Lamb has collaborated with numerous individuals and ensembles, including Third Coast Percussion, Aizuri Quartet, the Albany (NY) Symphony, Camilla Tassi, Contemporaneous, Emily Roller, the Yale Philharmonia, Evan Chapman, the University of Nebraska Percussion Ensemble, the Arizona State University Symphony Orchestra, and the Northern Illinois University World Steelband. Her music has been performed in North America, South America, Europe, and Africa
As a percussionist, Lamb is working on a solo project called The Concord of Discord, which combines spoken word with percussion and electronics. This project seeks to explore how everyday objects, ideas, and activities can lead us into considering "the bigger pictures" of our lives -- our families, identities, relationships, priorities, values, and philosophies. Lamb was also a performer from 2013-2020 with Projeto Arcomusical, the berimbau ensemble associated with Arcomusical. Her performance with the berimbau has been hailed as “riveting visually as well as sonically” (Centerline).
As an educator, Lamb’s work runs the gamut from private lessons to curriculum development, to clinics and large classes. She is a passionate advocate for students with disabilities and encourages creativity at every age and ability level. Her work in New Haven included developing the Creative Music-Making program for the Yale Music in Schools Initiative as well as serving as a Teaching Fellow for the Department of Music at Yale University and Teaching Assistant in the Yale School of Music. Prior to returning to graduate school, Lamb was the 6-12th grade band director for Meridian CUSD 223 in Stillman Valley, Illinois. She also served as interim percussion instructor for the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra in spring 2016 and created a week-long percussion camp at NIU for 4-12th grade students of varying abilities that has now grown into a faculty-led camp through the NIU Percussion and Steel Pan Studios. Lamb is currently serving as a Graduate Student Instructor at the University of Michigan.
Lamb is the recipient of a 2021 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as a 2018 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award. She is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition at the University of Michigan. Lamb earned a Master of Music in Composition at the Yale School of Music and two Bachelor of Music degrees in Music Education and Percussion Performance from Northern Illinois University. Her compositions can be found on Innova Recordings, National Sawdust Tracks, and Evan Chapman’s self-published record, Caustics. When not working on music, she can be found playing board games with her wife at an overly competitive level, teaching new tricks to her dog and two cats, and fishing in every possible body of water. She is originally from Denver, Colorado, and is currently based in Ypsilanti, Michigan.