As a performer and educator, Amy Hillis pursues opportunities to build community relationships using music inside and outside the traditional concert hall. As a violinist, she has commissioned Canadian works by Matt Brubeck, Fjóla Evans, Gabriel Dufour-Laperrière, Laurence Jobidon, Vincent Ho, Andrew Staniland, Jocelyn Morlock, Nicole Lizée, Carmen Braden, Randolph Peters and Jordan Pal. Her debut album titled Roots demonstrates the connections between select Canadian compositions and works from the traditional canon of classical repertoire. As part of the meagan&amy duo, Amy Hillis performed this repertoire in ten Canadian provinces during the inaugural “Pan-Canadian Partnership” Recital Tour. She also toured Canada as winner of the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition. As artist-in-residence at La Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, she studied the relationship between French and Québécois repertoire. Amy Hillis is also the founding member and manager of the prairie-based Horizon String Quartet with whom she has presented seven concert tours of interactive performances for schools across western Canada. Amy Hillis’ current research as a community music practitioner investigates the importance of a community’s “identity”. How can community musicians facilitate transformative music experiences by deepening a community’s sense of identity, whether this identity is geographical, racial, cultural or gender-based? Amy Hillis continues to perform and promote music by underrepresented composers, particularly in the classical music genre, in order to empower the voices of marginalized communities.