Gabriela Lena Frank

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Gabriela Lena Frank (b. Berkeley, California, United States, September 1972) is an American composer of contemporary classical music and pianist. Her father is an American of Lithuanian Jewish heritage, her mother is Peruvian of Chinese descent, and she grew up in Berkeley, California. Her parents met when her father was a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru in the 1960s.

She is a graduate of Rice University^[1] and received a doctorate from the University of Michigan in 2001. She has studied composition with William Albright, Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom, Michael Daugherty, and Samuel Jones.

Frank's work often draws on her multicultural heritage, especially drawing on Latin American idioms. Her music has been commissioned and performed by the Kronos Quartet^[2], pipa virtuoso Wu Man, San Francisco Symphony, Houston Symphony, Chanticleer Ensemble, the Chiara Quartet, the Brentano Quartet, Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Project, Carnegie Hall, the Marilyn Horne Foundation, and guitarist Manuel Barrueco with the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, directors of the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center Wu Han and David Finckel (also cellist with the Emerson Quartet), among others. Upcoming performances include those by the Baltimore Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella series.

She currently serves as composer-in-residence with the Modesto Symphony, the Fort Worth Symphony, and the Indianapolis Symphony. Past residencies have been with the Aspen Music Festival and the Seattle Symphony where new works were also commissioned.

She will be a featured artist at Music@Menlo in the summer of 2008, a festival established by Wu Han and David Finckel, the directors of the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center.

She was awarded the Young American Composer Residency with the California Symphony in 2005, but did not accept the position in order to pursue studies in South America.

In 2007 Gabriela was awarded with a Carnegie Hall commission as part of their New Music at Carnegie program.^[3]

Her works are published exclusively by G. Schirmer.

Frank is active as a pianist, having recorded the complete piano works of Pulitzer Prize winning composer Leslie Bassett on the Equilibrium label. Recent performances include those with members of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, St. Luke's Orchestra, the Lydian Quartet, the Manhattan Quartet, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Frank is a freelance composer who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area but travels frequently in North and South America. She is often a guest artist at universities and conservatories, giving performances, lectures, and lessons.