She began composition studies in 1977 while still in high school with Professor Robert Beadell at the University of Nebraska.
Her principal composition instructors were Charles Eakin, Joyce Mekeel, and Bernard Rands.
Composition prizes include a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant, Fromm Foundation Commission, Lee Ettleson Composition Prize[3] Bay Area Women's Philharmonic Composition Prize, and Friends and Enemies of New Music Composition[4] She has received commissions from ALEA III, Sequitur New Music Ensemble, the Fromm Foundation, guitarist David Tanenbaum, the American Dance Festival[5] the CORE Ensemble, the A*DEvantgarde Festival of Munich, tubist Samuel Pilafian, flutist Marianne Gedigian, the New England Brass Quintet, the Iowa Brass Quintet, Boston Conservatory, Boston University Marsh Chapel Choir, pianist Kathleen Supove, the Massachusetts Music Teachers Association, the Foxborough Musical Association, pianist Paul Carlson, the CrossSound New Music Festival of Juneau Alaska[6] the Seattle Trumpet Consort and the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston.
[7] Dr Epstein's work for piano, Waterbowls, has been described as "a luminous study in quiet sonorities and the ache of memory".
[8] Writing for The Boston Globe, David Weininger writes Epsteins's music "has the feel of suspension in space, fragile and almost static..."[9] The International Trumpet Guild Journal comments on her exploration of color in the Two Canons for Seven Natural Trumpets.