(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Partner of Darol Anger in the band Montreux, pianist Barbara Higbie also recorded with singer-songwriter Teresa Trull and accompanied Terry Riley in his group Khayal.

Born in Michigan but raised in California, apart from periods in Ghana and at the Sorbonne (where she met Darol Anger), Higbie supported herself for many years by playing in folk-music clubs, both in Berkeley and in Paris. After earning a degree in music theory from Mills College, she joined Anger and quickly gained recognition for her piano technique. She recorded the piano-and-violin duets Tideline (February 1982 � Windham Hill, 1982) with Anger and the vocal duets of Unexpected (1983) with Teresa Trull.

Signs Of Life, recorded after the breakup of Montreux, is not the usual album of piano sonatas but rather a singer-songwriter collection: despite its exceptional backing (Michael Manring, Mike Marshall, Steve Douglas), the album's protagonists are Higbie's voice and its softly feminist lyrics. Higbie reveals herself as a kind of Carole King or Laura Nyro of the 1990s, with the polished pop melodies of Waiting Song and the title track.

I Surrender (Slowbaby, 1996) is another stew of pop, jazz, folk, classical and world music. After Playtime (Slowbaby, 1998), another vocal collaboration with Trull, Higbie returned to her favorite multicultural piano-based genre with Variations on a Happy Ending (Slowbaby, 2000).