Amy Ley was 16 years old, nervously loading a harp into a van for the first time when a casual onlooker shouted, “I bet you wish you played the flute!”  At the time she responded with an awkward giggle instead of trying to explain that plucking the 47 strings of a harp was something, from the depths of her heart, that she had to do.

In hopes of plucking a bit better, she came to study under the enthusiastic guidance of harp professor Lynne Aspnes at the University of Michigan where she earned a BM and MM.

While pursuing her love for the harp, she has found herself in a tea house in Japan at the Pacific Music Festival, on a mountain top while at the Aspen Music Festival and on a crowded bus in the suburbs of L.A. trying to find her way to the beach after having placed third in the Young Professional division of the American Harp Society Competition.

Music has shaped her life and, indeed, her family.  She married blue-eyed cellist Andrew McIntosh, and together they are raising two kids, Fiona and Dylan, ages 4 and 6.

Amy is the Principal Harpist and often featured soloist for a number of orchestras in her home state of Michigan and adopted province of Ontario.

Through teaching, she engages in the best learning experience of all. She works with students at Hillsdale College, the University of Windsor, and the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan.