Amy Hillis has “a rich, warm sound and has mastered the violin with such ease, that it is impossible to ignore her passion in performance” (Ludwig Van Montréal). She challenges artistic norms to build community relationships inside and outside the concert hall. As a soloist, Amy has commissioned Canadian works by Fjóla Evans, Gabriel Dufour-Laperrière, Laurence Jobidon, Vincent Ho, Andrew Staniland, Jocelyn Morlock, Nicole Lizée, Carmen Braden, Randolph Peters, and Jordan Pal. She is the winner of the Pan-Canadian Recital Tour, the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition, an artistic residency at La Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, the McGill Concerto Competition, and the Sylva Gelber Foundation Music Award. A passionate chamber musician, she is a founding member of the meagan&amy duo with pianist, Meagan Milatz, and manager of the prairie-based Horizon String Quartet (HSQ). During seven different tours, the HSQ has performed over 200 interactive concerts for more than 10,000 young people in 100 different Canadian cities. 

Amy is currently an Assistant Professor of Music and the Helen Carswell Chair in Community-Engaged Research in the Arts at York University. She holds a Doctor of Music in Violin Performance from McGill University, completed under the guidance of Axel Strauss and with the support of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). She completed her Master of Music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with Ian Swensen and her Bachelor of Music at McGill University with Denise Lupien. While growing up in Regina, Amy studied with the concertmaster of the Regina Symphony Orchestra, Eduard Minevich. amyhillis.com