Composer Honored for Celebrating Diversity

October 8, 2018

IM  -  

Tania León, member of Local 802 (New York, NY), was recently elected to the board of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the Visual Arts and Performing Arts – Criticism and Practice category. She was inducted just last week on October 5th in Cambridge, MA.

León came to the United States from Cuba in 1967, and has been making a lasting impact on musicians and the realm of Latin American music ever since. The way in which she combines elements of gospel, jazz, African, and Cuban elements gives her a style all her own.

In 1969, León became the first musical director of Arthur Mitchell’s Dance Theatre of Harlem, where she established the music department, music school, and orchestra. Nine years later she launched the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert Series, and in 1994 León co-founded the American Composers Orchestra Sonidos de las Americas Festivals as the Latin American Music Advisor. Hoping to encourage composers of all ethnicities, in 2010 she founded the nonprofit Composers Now, an organization dedicated to empower all composers of all ethnic backgrounds.

Currently, León is on the executive board for In The States and the Fromm Music Foundation in Harvard. Some of her most recent accomplishments include the Mad Women Festival Award in Music, which she received in Madrid, Spain in 2017 and the 2018 USA Artist Fellowship.

To read all about Tania León and her life as a composer, conductor, and educator, please check out her cover story from February, 2018 here: https://internationalmusician.org/tania-leon/ or visit her website: http://www.tanialeon.com/.

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