GABRIELA FRANK

A recent addition to publisher G. Schirmer’s prestigious roster of artists, Gabriela Lena Frank has been hailed as representing “the next generation of American composers.” Her work has been elected to Chamber Music America’s list of “Top One Hundred and One Great American Ensemble Works” and incorporate Latin American mythology, art, poetry, and folk music into western classical forms, reflecting her Peruvian-Jewish heritage. Such compositions exhibit “honesty and genius” (Springfield Union-News) and “unself-conscious craft and mastery” (Washington Post). Upcoming premieres and collaborations include Inkarrí for the Kronos Quartet, a double concerto
(Compadrazgo) for cello/piano duo and directors of Lincoln Center David Finckel and Wu Han with the ProMusic Orchestra, and additional collaborations with the Berkeley and Seattle Symphonies, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Silk Road Project under the endorsement of Carnegie Hall and the Tanglewood Festival, the Brentano String Quartet, Chanticleer, the DaCamera Society of Houston, the Aspen Summer Music Festival, the Music Teachers Association of California, Grammy-winning guitarist Sharon Isbin, and two-time Naumberg winner soprano Lucy Shelton. In the spring of 2004, Three Latin American Dances received its premiere by the Utah Symphony Orchestra (with Keith Lockhart conducting) and was hailed as “brilliant”
(Salt Lake Tribune). It was subsequently recorded by the Utah Symphony for the Dorian label (release date Winter 2006). Several additional CD recordings of Gabriela’s solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral compositions are currently in production with major labels and artists.

Active as a pianist, Gabriela has recorded the complete solo piano and violin/piano compositions of Pulitzer Prize winning composer Leslie Bassett on the Equilibrium label for which the American Record Guide describes her performance as one of “care and enthusiasm.” She currently collaborates with renowned Peruvian ethnomusicologist Raul Romero in recording the piano music of indigenous composers of coastal and Andean Peru. Her live concert performances have been described as “captivating” (San Francisco Classical
Voice) and “splendidly realized” (Raleigh-Durham Spectator).

Gabriela has been featured and recognized by a number of organizations including ASCAP, the Theodore Presser Music Foundation, the Society of Composers Inc., the National Federation of Music Clubs, the International Alliance of Women in Music, the National Endowment for the Arts, National Public Radio, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Library of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, the American Composers Forum, the American Music Center, Arts International, the Gerard Schwarz/ASCAP Prize, the Meet The Composer Fund, and the inaugural Raymond and Beverly Sackler Music Composition Prize. A Global Connections award through Meet the Composer recently sent her to Brazil in May of 2005 where her flute concerto was performed by the Orquestra Sinfonica da Bahía and principal flutist Lucas Robatto in Salvador-Bahía. In addition, she will take up a Music Alive composer’s residency with the Seattle Symphony during the season of
2005-2006 to focus on outreach to black and Latino students. Recently, she
was named the 2005 Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Commissioned Composer by the California Association of Professional Music Teachers (CAPMT) for which she began composing a multi-movement solo piano work, The Book of Quipus. Gabriela has also served as Resident Composer for the Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum of the East in Bennington, Vermont during the summer of 2004, and has served as composer-in-residence at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, the Peabody Conservatory, the University of Southern California, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Kansas, and Cornell University during the 2004-2005 academic year. She was also recently given the coveted Young American Composer Residency with the California Symphony for the 2005-2008 season. Gabriela is a frequent guest at schools and festivals across North and Latin America.

Born in Berkeley, CA in 1972, Gabriela holds degrees from Rice University and a doctorate (2001) from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her teachers for composition have included William Albright, Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom, Michael Daugherty and Samuel Jones. Her piano studies have been with Jeanne Kierman Fischer and Logan Skelton. She currently makes her home in the San Francisco Bay Area and travels often in Latin America.