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Biography
Tania
León born in Cuba, a vital personality on today’s music scene,
is highly regarded as a composer and conductor recognized for her
accomplishments as an educator and advisor to arts organizations.
She
has been the subject of profiles on ABC, CBS, CNN, PBS, Univision (including
their noted series “Orgullo Hispano” which celebrates living American
Latinos whose contributions in society have been invaluable), Telemundo and
independent films.
León’s Ácana for orchestra was jointly commissioned and premiered by Orpheus at Carnegie Hall and by the Purchase College Orchestra. Ancients for 2 Sopranos and mixed ensemble was the first commission by Carolina Performing Arts for the Festival on the Hill 2008. Other recent premieres include Estampas, commissioned by the Chicago a cappella, Alma for flute and piano, commissioned by Marya Martin and Atwood Songs for Soprano and piano with text by Margaret Atwood commissioned by the Eastman School of Music and Syracuse University.
In March 2008 Ms. León served as U.S. Artistic Ambassador of American Culture in Madrid, Spain. In April, she held a Composer/Conductor residency at the Beijing Central Conservatory. The National Symphony of China offered the Chinese Premiere of Horizons at the opening concert of the Beijing International Congress of Women in Music.
Recent awards include a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fromm Music Foundation commission in 2005. She was named Distinguished Professor of the City University of New York in 2006. She received "La Distinción de Honor de la Rosa Blanca" from the Patronato José Martí for her contribution to Cuban culture in the field of music in 2008.
Tania
León was one of the first artists to be featured by Harlem Stage/Aaron Davis
Hall’s new program, WaterWorks.
Her two year residency at Harlem Stage culminated in the world premiere
of Reflections for soprano and chamber ensemble with text by Rita Dove.
An
evening of León’s chamber music was presented as part of Columbia
University’s Miller Theatre Composer Portrait series.
The New York Times noted that “A hidden Latin American dance rhythm
provides a fixed point upon which she attaches other overlapping and enormously
varied rhythmic patterns. Ms. León
animates her tart atonal harmonies…. intense, hard-driving yet elusive… the
concert attracted a large, mostly young and encouragingly diverse audience.”
For the full
review, click here.
In
March 2005, Ms. León joined forces with Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka, with
whom she collaborated on her award-winning opera Scourge of Hyacinths. Based
on Soyinka’s Samarkand and Other Markets
I Have Known, the new work celebrated the opening of the Shaw Center for the
Performing Arts in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
León's
work has been featured in celebrations of some of the most prestigious composers
of our time including performances of Rituál
and Mistica, during the Chicago
Symphony’s MusicNow "Pierre Boulez's 80th Birthday Celebration".
In
the past few years, León has appeared as guest conductor throughout Europe,
including subscription series concerts of the Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of
Marseille, the Orchestre Symphonique de Nancy, in France, the Orquesta Sinfonica
de Asturias, Spain, L'Orchestre de la Suisse
Romande, Santa Cecilia Orchestra, Rome, Italy, the Gewaundhausorchester,
Leipzig, Germany, as well
as the Orquesta de la Comunidad y Coro de Madrid, Spain.
In
March 2001, León’s opera Scourge of
Hyacinths received three performances during the Festival Centro Historico
in Mexico City. Staged and designed
by Robert Wilson and conducted by the composer, the work is based on a radio
play by Wole Soyinka. The opera was
commissioned in 1994 by the Munich Biennale, where it won the BMW Prize as best
new opera of the festival. In 1999,
it was given seventeen performances to great acclaim by the Grand Théâtre de
Genève, Switzerland, the Opéra de Nancy et de Lorraine in France and the St. Pölten
Festspielhaus, Austria. The
aria Oh Yemanja ("Mother’s Prayer” from Hyacinths was recorded by Dawn
Upshaw on her Nonesuch CD “The World So Wide”.
León’s orchestral work Desde... was premiered by the American Composers Orchestra March 2001 in Carnegie Hall. Its composition was supported by a grant from the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation. Horizons for orchestra was written for the NDR Symphony Orchestra of Hamburg and premiered there at the July 1999 Hammoniale Festival. In August 2000, the work had its United States premiere at the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival. Her hour-long multimedia work Drummin’, juxtaposes ethnic percussion ensembles with orchestra. The work, which features percussionists of diverse cultures has received acclaimed performances in Miami, FL and Hamburg, Germany,
Collaborations
with award winning poets include … or
like a with John Ashbery, Love
After Love with Derek Walcott, Singin’
Sepia and Reflections with Rita Dove,
A Row of Buttons with Fae
Myenne Ng, Rezos with Jamaica Kincaid
and Atwood Songs,
with Margaret Atwood.
Her honors include the New York Governor’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Honorary Doctorate degrees from Colgate University, Oberlin and Purchase College. In 2007, The New York City Council presented a Proclamation to Ms. León for her personal achievements.
Awards
for her compositions include the American Academy of Arts
and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, NYSCA,
the Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fund, ASCAP, Meet the Composer and the Koussevitzky Foundation,
among others. In 1998 she held the Fromm Residency at the American Academy in
Rome.
In 1969 León became a founding member and first Music Director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem establishing the Dance Theatre’s Music Department, Music School and Orchestra. She instituted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert Series in 1978 and in 1994 co-founded the American Composers Orchestra Sonidos de las Americas Festivals in her capacity as Latin American Music Advisor. From 1993 to 1997 she was New Music Advisor to Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic. She has made appearances as guest conductor with the Beethovenhalle Orchestra, Bonn, the National Symphony Orchestra of Johannesburg, South Africa, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, Holland, the Chicago Sinfonietta and the New York Philharmonic, among others.
León has been Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University, Visiting Professor at Yale University, the University of Michigan, the University of Kansas, Purchase College and the Musikschule in Hamburg. In 2000 she was named the Claire and Leonard Tow Professor in Music at Brooklyn College, and Distinguished Professor of the City University of New York since 2006.
***
READ
AN INTERVIEW WITH TANIA in Composers’ Voices From Ives to
TO
KNOW MORE ABOUT TANIA’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE BROOKLYN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA,
check out How Music Grew in
Brooklyn, a biography of the
Tania León: What it Means to be an American Composer. Published in newmusicbox.org, the web magazine from the American Music Center.
Related Activities:
Board Member, MacDowell Colony
Board Member, New Music Connoisseur
Board of Advisors, Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas
Board of Advisors, American Composers Orchestra
Board of Advisors, Encompass Music Theatre
Board of Advisors, International Alliance for Women in Music
Board of Advisors, Quintet of the Americas
Chair, Honorary Degrees Committee, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Editorial Advisory Board, New Music Connoisseur
Symphony and Concert Committee, ASCAP
Special Classifications Committee, ASCAP
Concert Committee, Interfaith Committee of Remembrance
Board Member, American Music Center, 2001-2007
Profile feature, "Noticias del Mediodia", Telemundo, 2005
National Screening Committee, Institute of International Education. 2003-2005
Guest, "Bright Nights Big City, Music New York", WNYE TV 25, 2003
Profile feature, "Orgullo Hispano", Univision, 2002
President, Jury, Concorso Internazionale di Composizione "2 Agosto", Bologna, Italy, 2002