Barry Snyder received bachelor’s and master’s degrees, as well as the Performer’s Certificate and the Artist’s Diploma, from Eastman. He studied piano with Wilbur Hoffman, Vladimir Sokoloff, and Cécile Genhart, and accompanying with Brooks Smith and John Celentano, and was a triple prize winner in the 1966 Van Cliburn International Competition: Silver Medal, Pan American Union Award and the Chamber Music Prize.
Besides his innumerable solo recitals and chamber music collaborations with several generations of Eastman artists, Barry Snyder has also performed with Herman Prey, Ani Kavafian, Jan DeGaetani, Raphael Hillyer, as a member of Eastman Trio (1976-82) and Meadowmount Trio (1989-90), and with the Cleveland, Curtis, Purcell, and Composer’s Quartets. He has performed with conductors such as Robert Shaw, Leopold Stokowski, David Zinman, Sixten Ehrling, and Arthur Fiedler. He has appeared with such orchestras as the Detroit, Houston, Baltimore, and Singapore Symphonies, the Rochester and Japan Philharmonic Orchestras, Krakow and Brno Radio Symphonies, Toronto Chamber Orchestra, and the Aspen Summer Festival Orchestra. He has also given master classes throughout the world, chaired the jury for the World International Piano Competition in Cincinnati, and was a jury member for the Glasgow Young Artists Competition.
Barry Snyder has premiered concertos and solo works by Syd Hodkinson, Verne Reynolds, Toshio Hosokawa, Augusta Read Thomas, David Liptak, Carter Pann, Alec Wilder, and John LaMontaine.
Barry Snyder has participated in more than forty solo, concerto, and chamber recordings; his recording of the complete cello and piano works of Fauré with Steven Doane on Bridge Records was awarded the Diapason D’or.
He taught at Eastman from 1970 until his retirement in 2017, and is listed in the book The Most Wanted Piano Teachers in the United States. In 2018, he accepted an Adjunct Professor position at New York University. Barry Snyder received the University of Rochester’s Edward Peck Curtis Award for Teaching Excellence in 1975, and was named “Musician of the Year” by Mu Phi Epsilon in 1987.