Cortona Sessions for New Music

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gabriela lena frank, composition

Born in Berkeley, California, to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Gabriela Lena Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Gabriela has travelled extensively throughout South America and her pieces reflect and refract her studies of Latin-American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework. 

 

Winner of a Latin Grammy and nominated for Grammys as both composer and pianist, Gabriela also holds a Guggenheim Fellowship and a USA Artist Fellowship given each year to fifty of the country’s finest artists.  Her work has been described as “crafted with unselfconscious mastery” (Washington Post), “brilliantly effective” (New York Times), “a knockout” (Chicago Tribune” and “glorious” (Los Angeles Times).  A member of the Silk Road Ensemble, Gabriela is regularly commissioned by luminaries such as cellist Yo Yo Ma, soprano Dawn Upshaw, the King’s Singers, and the Kronos Quartet.  She is also commissioned and performed by premiere orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony.  In 2013, she began her tenure as composer-in-residence with the Detroit Symphony and maestro Leonard Slatkin and continues her longstanding creative relationship with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz on operatic works.  

 

Gabriela’s life and music is featured in multiple scholarly books including the W.W. Norton Anthology: The Musics of Latin America. 

She is also the feature subject of multiple PBS documentaries: “Peregrinos/Pilgrims: A Musical Journey,” documenting her symphony inspired by interviews with Hispanic immigrants in Indianapolis, Indiana; “Compadre Huashayo,” documenting her work in Quito, Ecuador composing for the Orquestra de Instrumentos Andinos comprised entirely of native highland instruments; and “Música Mestiza,” documenting a workshop uniting indigenous Andean musicians and a classically-trained string quartet at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to premiere original new work.  

 

Gabriela earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Rice University in Houston, Texas and her doctorate at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  Her primary teachers in piano have been Jeanne Kierman Fischer and Logan Skelton and her primary teacher in composition has been William Bolcom.  She currently makes her home in the Bay Area and travels frequently in South America.