Tania León
b. May 14, 1943
Tania León is a Cuban-born composer, conductor, and educator. She was born in Havana, Cuba in 1943 and began studying piano at the age of four.
She earned her B.A. and M.A. in Music in her native city (BA 1963, MA 1964) and settled in New York in 1967. She attended New York University where she studied composition (BS 1971, MS 1975). Soon after her arrival in New York, she became the rehearsal pianist for the Dance Theatre of Harlem, one of the company’s founding members and had a long and productive association with them as pianist, conductor and composer.
León has played important roles at various other New York institutions, including the Brooklyn Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra and its Sonidos de las Américas festivals, and the New York Philharmonic, where she served as New Music Advisor. Additionally, she conducted on Broadway (perhaps most notably for The Wiz in the late 1970s).
León’s compositional style absorbed American influences such as jazz and gospel. Her work also includes textual and rhythmic elements from her African and Cuban cultural heritage alongside contemporary classical techniques. Grove Music Online refers to her works as “technically demanding, and characterized by dense textures, angular melodies, dissonant harmonies and colourful orchestration.”
Her works include ballets, chamber music, orchestral music, music for solo instruments, vocal music, electro-acoustic music and also an opera, Scourge of Hyacinths.
According to León’s website, “Recent commissions include: the score for the opera, The Little Rock Nine, with a libretto by Thulani Davis, and historical research by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., commissioned by the University of Central Arkansas‘s College of Fine Arts and Communication.” Here’s a 2017 article about a performance of excerpts from this work-in-progress: https://arktimes.com/rock-candy/2017/09/26/a-glimpse-of-the-little-rock-nine-opera-at-uca.
Tania León & Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in conversation at a UCA event in 2017.
Tania León is also the founder and artistic director of Composers Now, a non-profit dedicated to empowering all living composers and celebrating the diversity of their voices.
If you’d like to learn more about Tania León here are some resources available in the Music Library:
* In Her Own Words: Conversations with Composers in the United States (Book)
* Indígena (CD)
* Batá: for Orchestra (Score)
* Pet’s Suite: Flute and Piano (Score)
* Mística: for Solo Piano (Score)
* The Sensual Nature of Sound: 4 composers, Laurie Anderson, Tania Leon, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros (Streaming Video via Kanopy)
* In Motion (CD)
