a biography of the day--Tania León
Tania León
Tania Leon/
Tania León (born May 14, 1943 in Havana, Cuba) is a Cuban composer and conductor who has been recognized 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".
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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.[1]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tania_Le%C3%B3n
