Though her repertoire ranges from Baroque to contemporary, Amy Dissanayake is especially committed to performing music of living composers. She has premièred many solo and chamber works, and has worked with such composers as Pierre Boulez, Esa-Pekka Salonen, George Crumb, Augusta Read Thomas, Joan Tower, David Lang, Simon Bainbridge, John Adams, Marta Ptazsynska, Tania Léon, and David Rakowski. Her recordings of volumes 1 and 2 of David Rakowski's Piano Etudes on Bridge Records have received much critical acclaim. She is a featured soloist and chamber musician on the Chicago Symphony's 2005 MusicNOW series, and has performed with the Chicago Contemporary Players, Chicago Pro Musica, the Chicago Chamber Musicians, Klang, and the Empyrean Ensemble. The Chicago Tribune has called her "extraordinary" in her "mastery of what lay on the dense, printed page and beyond"; and the Chicago Sun Times called her a "ferociously talented pianist." Of her Rakowski disc, Classics Today says, "Dissanayake does a splendid job projecting the music's wit, and her unflappable virtuosity makes even the densest writing sound effortless... a marvelous disc that piano fanciers should snap up without hesitation."

Amy Dissanayake has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa. Her selection in 1993 as a United States Artistic Ambassador led to a highly acclaimed concert tour of eight countries in Africa and South Asia, where she gave solo recitals, lectures, and master-classes as part of a broad-based cultural exchange program sponsored by the United States Information Agency. Ms. Dissanayake served as the principal pianist of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago for six years, and has performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as an extra keyboardist. Awards include a stipend prize at the 2000 Darmstadt Internationale Fereinkurse für Neue Musik, first prizes in the American Opera Society of Chicago competition, the Union League and Civic Arts Foundation piano competition, the Farwell Competition, and the Rose Fay Thomas Competition, which led to a solo performance in Orchestra Hall, Chicago. Ms. Dissanayake has also been a prizewinner in the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition and the Frinna Awerbuch International Piano Competition.

Amy Dissanayake has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, New Hampshire Philharmonic, and the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka, and her live and recorded performances have been featured on radio stations around the United States and in Europe. Recent performances include the Rock Hotel Piano Festival in New York City, the June in Buffalo Festival, the Rotterdam Music Biennial in The Netherlands, and solo recitals in the People's Republic of China. Upcoming engagements include a solo recording of new tangos for piano, chamber music recordings of Conlon Nancarrow and Erik Oña for Wergo records at the WDR radio studios in Köln, Germany, performances at the Universities of California at Santa Barbara and Davis, a world première of Jeffrey Mumford's new piano quintet with the world-renowned Pacifica Quartet, solo performances in New York, Chicago (on the MusicNOW series), and North Carolina, and a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. Ms. Dissanayake studied with Ursula Oppens at Northwestern University, where she earned a Doctorate in Piano Performance in 1999.