Tania Leon

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Tania León (born May 14, 1943 in Havana, Cuba), a vital personality on today’s music scene and in demand as a composer and conductor, has been recognized for her significant accomplishments as an educator and advisor to arts organizations.

León's opera Scourge of Hyacinths, staged and designed by Robert Wilson with León conducting, has received over 22 performances in Germany, Switzerland, France and Mexico. Based on a radio play by Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka it was commissioned in 1994 by the Munich Biennale, where it won the BMW Prize as best new opera. The aria Oh Yemanja from Scourge 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 in March 2001 in Carnegie Hall. Horizons, written for the NDR Symphony Orchestra of Hamburg premiered at the July 1999 Hammoniale Festival, with Peter Ruzicka conducting. In August 2000, Horizons had its U.S. premiere at the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival, Stefan Asbury conducting. León conducted the work with the Orchestre Symphonique de Nancy (France) in March 2002.

Drummin', a full-length cross-cultural work for indigenous percussionists and orchestra, was commissioned and premiered in 1997 by Miami Light Project and the New World Symphony. It opened the 1999 Hammoniale Festival, Hamburg.

Many of León's works have been recorded, including Batá, by the Foundation Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by David Snell and produced by Sir George Martin; Indígena, a collection of León’s chamber music; Carabalí (and already Batá) on the Louisville Orchestra’s First Edition Records; Rituál, for solo piano, and her arrangement of Moises Simons' song El Manisero for Chanticleer.

In 1998 she was awarded the New York Governor’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She has received Honorary Doctorates from Colgate University and Oberlin College and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, NYSCA, Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fund, ASCAP and Koussevitzky Foundation, among others. In 1998 she held the Fromm Residency at the American Academy in Rome.

León was a founding member and first Music Director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem establishing their 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 as Latin American Music Advisor. From 1993 to 1997 she was New Music Advisor to Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic.

She has been guest conductor with the Beethovenhalle Orchestra, Bonn, the Gewandhausorchester, Leipzig, the Santa Cecilia Orchestra, Rome, the National Symphony Orchestra of South Africa, Johannesburg, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, the Netherlands, and the New York Philharmonic, among others.

Tania León has been the subject of profiles on ABC, CBS, CNN, PBS, Univision and independent films.

León was Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University, Visiting Professor at Yale University and the Musikschule in Hamburg. In 2000 she was named the Tow Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College, where she has taught since 1985 .