TANIA LEÓN

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Tania León came to the US from her native Cuba in 1967, following many years of piano study and earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music. She settled in New York City, where she studied with composer Ursula Mamlok.

León was a founding member and music director of Arthur Mitchell’s Dance Theatre of Harlem, starting in 1969. Five years later, she instituted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert series. From 1994 to 2001 she served as Latin American music adviser for the American Composers Orchestra, where she co-founded the groundbreaking Sonidos de las Américas festivals in response to the increasing importance of Latin America in the cultural life of the U.S. She is the founder and artistic director of Composers Now, which is dedicated to empowering living composers and celebrating the diversity of their voices.

León recently retired from her position at Brooklyn College and at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she had been Distinguished Professor of the City University of New York since 2006. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2010, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018. Her many honors include the ASCAP Victor Herbert Award and the New York Governors’ Lifetime Achievement Award. León received the Pulitzer Prize for Stride in 2021, and in 2022 she received the Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award from Chamber Music America, an honorary doctorate from the Curtis Institute, and she was chosen as a Kennedy Center Honoree.

León’s catalogue extends to almost 40 chamber works, 12 orchestral pieces, and 6 ballets, in addition to numerous vocal compositions and pieces for solo instruments. Her opera Scourge of Hyacinths, based on a radio play by Wole Soyinka, was awarded the BMW Prize for Best Composition of the Munich 1994 Biennale for New Music Theatre and was subsequently performed in Europe and Mexico in a production directed by Robert Wilson.

Photo: Gail Hadani