Gabriela Lena Frank
Encyclopedia
Gabriela Lena Frank is an American composer of contemporary classical music
and pianist.
heritage and her mother is Peruvian of Chinese descent.http://books.google.com/books?id=N5MJAQAAMAAJ&q=Gabriela+Lena+Frank+jewish&dq=Gabriela+Lena+Frank+jewish&hl=en&ei=rVpHTrDtEqn10gGbqJmQCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAw She grew up in Berkeley, California. Her parents met when her father was a Peace Corps
volunteer in Peru
in the 1960s.
Frank is a graduate of Rice University
and received a D.M.A. in Music Composition from the University of Michigan
in 2001. She has studied composition with William Albright
, Leslie Bassett
, William Bolcom
, Michael Daugherty
, and Samuel Jones
. While she was still a doctoral student, in 2000 her "Sonata Andina" was among the winners in a professional competition, the Search for New Music of the International Alliance for Women in Music
.
or charango
guitar although the works typically are for Western classical instruments and ensembles such as the piano and string quartet. She has said, "I think the music can be seen as a by-product of my always trying to figure out how Latina I am and how gringa I am."
, pipa virtuoso Wu Man
, San Francisco Symphony
, Houston Symphony, Chanticleer
Ensemble, the Chiara String Quartet
, the Brentano Quartet
, Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project
, Carnegie Hall
, the Marilyn Horne Foundation, guitarist Manuel Barrueco
with the Cuarteto Latinoamericano
, the King's Singers, directors of the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center Wu Han and David Finckel (also cellist with the Emerson Quartet), soprano Dawn Upshaw
and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and others. Past performances include those by the Boston Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony
, the Chicago Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Green Umbrella series.
She has served as composer-in-residence with the Modesto Symphony, the Fort Worth Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Aspen Music Festival, the Seattle Symphony
, the Nashville Symphony, and many others. She currently serves as composer-in-residence with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and creative advisor to the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. She has been featured at many festivals around the world including Music@Menlo
, Tanglewood Music Festival
, and the Chicago Chamber Players.
In 2007 Frank was awarded with her third Carnegie Hall
commission as part of their New Music at Carnegie program.
2009 was an especially eventful year for Frank as she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
as well as a Latin Grammy Award for best Contemporary Classical Music Composition for Inca Dances (Tonar Label), which was written for guitarist Manuel Barrueco and the Cuarteto Latinoamericano. She was also the feature of a PBS documentary entitled "Peregrinos" (produced by Emmy-winning producer Aric Hartvig) regarding her residency with the Indianapolis Symphony orchestra between 2007 and 2009 where, with an award from the Joyce Foundation
, she composed a work inspired by the stories of Latino immigrants in Indianapolis. In the fall of 2009, she accepted a position with her hometown orchestra, the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, to serve as its new Creative Advisor, where she works closely with conductor Joana Carneiro to assist with designing orchestral programming, mentor composers in the Under Construction program, and identify other areas of artistic growth.
Gabriela Lena Frank is a member of the Silk Road Ensemble under the direction of cellist Yo Yo Ma. Her composition Ritmos Anchinos appears on the Silk Road Ensemble's album Off the Map (World Village & In a Circle Records, 2009). "Off the Map" was nominated for a Grammy for Best Classical Crossover Album for 2010.
In 2010 Frank won a United States Artists
Fellow award..
In 2011, Frank released a complete CD of her works on the Naxos label with the Nashville-based ALIAS Ensemble, featuring a new mixed quartet written expressly for ALIAS. In its first week of release, it broke into the Billboard's top 100 Classical Recordings and was subsequently awarded a rare "10/10" rating by Classics Today.
Frank is a frequent collaborator with Caminos del Inka under the direction of conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya. She works closely with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz
in the creation of original new musical works for voice. Frank and Mr. Cruz recently completed a set of orchestral songs for Dawn Upshaw
and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.
Frank is also 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 current and former members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, 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.
She is a member of the prestigious roster of G. Schirmer
, exclusively published and managed.
Contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...
and pianist.
Biography
She is Jewish, and her father is an American of Lithuanian JewishLithuanian Jews
Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks are Jews with roots in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania:...
heritage and her mother is Peruvian of Chinese descent.http://books.google.com/books?id=N5MJAQAAMAAJ&q=Gabriela+Lena+Frank+jewish&dq=Gabriela+Lena+Frank+jewish&hl=en&ei=rVpHTrDtEqn10gGbqJmQCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAw She grew up in Berkeley, California. Her parents met when her father was a Peace Corps
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an American volunteer program run by the United States Government, as well as a government agency of the same name. The mission of the Peace Corps includes three goals: providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand US culture, and helping...
volunteer in Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
in the 1960s.
Frank is a graduate of Rice University
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...
and received a D.M.A. in Music Composition from the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
in 2001. She has studied composition with William Albright
William Albright (musician)
William Albright was an American composer, pianist and organist.Albright was born in Gary, Indiana, and began learning the piano at the age of five, and attended the Juilliard Preparatory Department , the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan , where he studied composition with...
, Leslie Bassett
Leslie Bassett
Leslie Bassett is an American composer of classical music, and the University of Michigan’s Albert A. Stanley Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Composition...
, William Bolcom
William Bolcom
William Elden Bolcom is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, two Grammy Awards, the Detroit Music Award and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America. Bolcom taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973–2008...
, Michael Daugherty
Michael Daugherty
Michael Kevin Daugherty is an American composer, pianist, and teacher. Influenced by popular culture, Romanticism, and Postmodernism, Daugherty is one of the most colorful and widely performed American concert music composers of his generation...
, and Samuel Jones
Samuel Jones (composer)
Samuel Jones is an American composer and conductor.-Biography:Samuel Jones, a native of Mississippi , graduated from the Central High School in Jackson and received his undergraduate degree with highest honors at Millsaps College. He acquired his professional training at the Eastman School of...
. While she was still a doctoral student, in 2000 her "Sonata Andina" was among the winners in a professional competition, the Search for New Music of the International Alliance for Women in Music
International Alliance for Women in Music
The International Alliance for Women in Music is an international membership organization of women and men dedicated to fostering and encouraging the activities of women in music, particularly in the areas of musical activity, such as composing, performing, and research, in which gender...
.
Style
Frank's work often draws on her multicultural background, especially her mother's Peruvian heritage. In many of her compositions, she elicits the sounds of Latin American instruments such as Peruvian pan flutePan flute
The pan flute or pan pipe is an ancient musical instrument based on the principle of the closed tube, consisting usually of five or more pipes of gradually increasing length...
or charango
Charango
The charango is a small Andean stringed instrument of the lute family, 66 cm long, traditionally made with the shell of the back of an armadillo. Primarily played in traditional Andean music, and is sometimes used by other Latin American musicians. Many contemporary charangos are now made with...
guitar although the works typically are for Western classical instruments and ensembles such as the piano and string quartet. She has said, "I think the music can be seen as a by-product of my always trying to figure out how Latina I am and how gringa I am."
Professional Life
Frank's music has been commissioned and performed by the Kronos QuartetKronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
, pipa virtuoso Wu Man
Wu Man
Wu Man is a Chinese pipa virtuoso and composer. Described as "the artist most responsible for bring the pipa to the Western World" by the Los Angeles Times, US-based, Chinese-born musician Wu Man has carved out a career creating and fostering projects that give this ancient Chinese instrument a...
, San Francisco Symphony
San Francisco Symphony
The San Francisco Symphony is an orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980, the orchestra has performed at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus are part of the organization...
, Houston Symphony, Chanticleer
Chanticleer
- Fiction :*A rooster appearing in fables about Reynard The Fox**The Nun's Priest's Tale, a version of Chanticleer and the Fox told in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales**By metonymy, any rooster**A character in the movie Rock-a-Doodle played by Glen Campbell...
Ensemble, the Chiara String Quartet
Chiara String Quartet
The Chiara String Quartet is an internationally performing professional string quartet based in Lincoln, Nebraska. The group is the Quartet-in-residence at the School of Music in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is also the Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University...
, the Brentano Quartet
Brentano Quartet
The Brentano Quartet is a string quartet founded in 1992. It is the first quartet-in-residence at Princeton University, where the members regularly teach chamber music. They have embarked on several tours in the United States...
, Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project
Silk Road Project
Silk Road Project, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization, initiated by acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 1998, promoting collaboration among artists and institutions, promoting multicultural artistic exchange, and studying the ebb and flow of ideas among different cultures along the Silk Road. The...
, Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
, the Marilyn Horne Foundation, guitarist Manuel Barrueco
Manuel Barrueco
Manuel Barrueco is a Cuban virtuoso classical guitarist. He was born in 1952 in Santiago de Cuba, on Cuba's southeastern shore. He has toured in the U.S., Europe and Japan, and serves on the faculty of Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland.-Biography:...
with the Cuarteto Latinoamericano
Cuarteto Latinoamericano
Celebrating its thirtieth anniversary season, Cuarteto Latinoamericano is a world renown string quartet from Latin America. They have toured extensively in Europe, the Americas, Israel, China, Japan and New Zealand...
, the King's Singers, directors of the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center Wu Han and David Finckel (also cellist with the Emerson Quartet), soprano Dawn Upshaw
Dawn Upshaw
Dawn Upshaw is an American soprano described as "one of the most consequential performers of our time" by the Los Angeles Times. The recipient of several Grammy Awards and Edison Prize-winning discs, Upshaw is at home both in opera and art song, and in repertoire from Baroque to contemporary...
and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and others. Past performances include those by the Boston Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony
San Francisco Symphony
The San Francisco Symphony is an orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980, the orchestra has performed at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus are part of the organization...
, the Chicago Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Los Angeles Philharmonic
The Los Angeles Philharmonic is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California, United States. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at the Hollywood Bowl from July through September...
Green Umbrella series.
She has served as composer-in-residence with the Modesto Symphony, the Fort Worth Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Aspen Music Festival, the Seattle Symphony
Seattle Symphony
The Seattle Symphony is an American orchestra based in Seattle, Washington. Since 1998, the orchestra is resident at Benaroya Hall. The orchestra's season runs from September through July, and serves as the pit orchestra for most productions of the Seattle Opera in addition to its own concerts...
, the Nashville Symphony, and many others. She currently serves as composer-in-residence with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and creative advisor to the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. She has been featured at many festivals around the world including Music@Menlo
Music@Menlo
Music@Menlo is an annual summer chamber music festival in San Francisco, California. The festival was founded in 2003 by cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han. American Public Media says that "Music@Menlo has rapidly become one of the world's top-tier chamber music festivals due to the quality...
, Tanglewood Music Festival
Tanglewood Music Festival
The Tanglewood Music Festival is a music festival held every summer on the Tanglewood estate in Lenox, Massachusetts in the Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts....
, and the Chicago Chamber Players.
In 2007 Frank was awarded with her third Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
commission as part of their New Music at Carnegie program.
2009 was an especially eventful year for Frank as she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
as well as a Latin Grammy Award for best Contemporary Classical Music Composition for Inca Dances (Tonar Label), which was written for guitarist Manuel Barrueco and the Cuarteto Latinoamericano. She was also the feature of a PBS documentary entitled "Peregrinos" (produced by Emmy-winning producer Aric Hartvig) regarding her residency with the Indianapolis Symphony orchestra between 2007 and 2009 where, with an award from the Joyce Foundation
Joyce Foundation
The Joyce Foundation is a charitable foundation based in Chicago in the United States and operating principally in the Great Lakes region.The Foundation primarily funds organizations in the Great Lakes region .-Programs:* Education: Focuses on public schools in Chicago, Cleveland, and Milwaukee;...
, she composed a work inspired by the stories of Latino immigrants in Indianapolis. In the fall of 2009, she accepted a position with her hometown orchestra, the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, to serve as its new Creative Advisor, where she works closely with conductor Joana Carneiro to assist with designing orchestral programming, mentor composers in the Under Construction program, and identify other areas of artistic growth.
Gabriela Lena Frank is a member of the Silk Road Ensemble under the direction of cellist Yo Yo Ma. Her composition Ritmos Anchinos appears on the Silk Road Ensemble's album Off the Map (World Village & In a Circle Records, 2009). "Off the Map" was nominated for a Grammy for Best Classical Crossover Album for 2010.
In 2010 Frank won a United States Artists
United States Artists
United States Artists is an independent nonprofit and nongovernmental philanthropic organization based in Los Angeles, California and dedicated to supporting the work of living American artists by the granting of cash awards, called USA Fellowships...
Fellow award..
In 2011, Frank released a complete CD of her works on the Naxos label with the Nashville-based ALIAS Ensemble, featuring a new mixed quartet written expressly for ALIAS. In its first week of release, it broke into the Billboard's top 100 Classical Recordings and was subsequently awarded a rare "10/10" rating by Classics Today.
Frank is a frequent collaborator with Caminos del Inka under the direction of conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya. She works closely with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz
Nilo Cruz
Nilo Cruz is an Cuban-American playwright and pedagogue. With his award of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play, Anna in the Tropics, he became the first Latino so honored.-Early years:...
in the creation of original new musical works for voice. Frank and Mr. Cruz recently completed a set of orchestral songs for Dawn Upshaw
Dawn Upshaw
Dawn Upshaw is an American soprano described as "one of the most consequential performers of our time" by the Los Angeles Times. The recipient of several Grammy Awards and Edison Prize-winning discs, Upshaw is at home both in opera and art song, and in repertoire from Baroque to contemporary...
and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.
Frank is also 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 current and former members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is a Grammy Award-winning classical music chamber orchestra based in New York City. It is known for its collaborative leadership style in which the musicians, not a conductor, interpret the score....
, 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
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
but travels frequently in North and South America. She is often a guest artist at universities and conservatories, giving performances, lectures, and lessons.
She is a member of the prestigious roster of G. Schirmer
G. Schirmer
G. Schirmer Inc. is an American classical music publishing company based in New York City, founded in 1861. It publishes sheet music for sale and rental, and represents some well-known European music publishers in North America, such as the Italian Ricordi, Music Sales Affiliates ChesterNovello,...
, exclusively published and managed.