Born in
Paris, Amy entered the
Conservatoire de Paris in 1954, where he was taught and influenced by
Olivier Messiaen and
Darius Milhaud and studied piano with
Yvonne Loriod and fugue with
Simone Plé-Caussade. His first composition (
Œil de fumée) dates from 1955. In 1957 he met
Pierre Boulez, under whose direction he composed his Piano Sonata. A year later Boulez commissioned from him a work called
Mouvements, which was performed in
Darmstadt by the Orchestre du
Domaine musical. From 1958 to 1961 he attended the
Darmstädter Ferienkurse given by
Karlheinz Stockhausen, and developed a style highly influenced by the trend of
serialism. In 1962
Jean-Louis Barrault named him adjunct music director of the
Odéon Theater in Paris. At the same time he undertook a career as conductor in Europe and Argentina. Between 1967 and 1973 he was the director of the Domaine Musical, succeeding Pierre Boulez. From 1973 to 1975 he was music advisor to
ORTF and worked to "reform" the music heard on the radio. From 1976 to 1981, he was music director of the Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique of
Radio France. In 1984, Amy succeeded
Pierre Cochereau as Director of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique at Lyon, while continuing to compose music. His notable students include
Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux and
Jeffrey Brooks. Amy's talent as a composer has won him a number of awards including the Grand Prix National de la Musique in 1979, the Grand Prix of
SACEM in 1983, the Grand Prix Musical of the City of Paris in 1986 and the Prix of the President of the Republic from the Academy Charles Cros in 1987. ==List of works==