Leon - Ritual

for Solo Piano

•

TANIA LEON

Tania León Born in Havana, Cuba, Tania León has lived in and around New York City since 1967. She has made a lasting mark on the musical life of the city. She was first musical director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, she instituted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert Series, from 1993 to 1997 she was New Music Advisor to Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic, and she served as Latin American Music Advisor to the American Composers Orchestra until 2001, when she co-founded the award-winning Sonidos de las Americas festivals. All the while, she has been a professor at Brooklyn College, twice receiving the Tow Award for distinguished teaching. León’s compositions include several works for piano solo, many chamber works for various combinations of instruments, orchestra works, and an opera (Scourge of Hyacinths, 1994). She has received awards for her compositions from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, the Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fund, NYSCA, ASCAP, and Meet the Composer, among others. In 1998 she held the Fromm Residency at the American Academy in Rome; she has also been a resident at Yaddo (supported by a MacArthur Foundation Award), and at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy. A brief discography of León’s music includes Singin’ Sepia on Bridge; Indígena, on New World Records; the orchestral works Batá and Carabalí on the Louisville Orchestra’s First Edition Records; an arrangement of the Cuban song El Manisero for Chanticleer on Teldec; Journey for the Jubal Trio, also on CRI. Her music is also featured on Cendim, Newport Classic, Leonarda, Mode Opus One, and Urtext.

Rituál After a languid, almost improvisatory introduction, León gradually builds up an ostinato pattern that leaps from the lowest note on the keyboard to its upper extremities. As with much of the composer’s music, the pulse is constant but the accents are unpredictable; the dissonant harmonies are relatively static; and all the musical elements are subsumed by the savage, brutal rhythmic power. The pianoshaking ferocity of Rituál’s conclusion might suggest that León had some actual ceremony in mind, but she insists that the ritual she refers to is really her own rite of passage. Dedicated to the Dance Theater of Harlem's founders Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook, Rituál is "about the fire in the spirit of people who encourage other people, because they see something that the person doesn't see herself. It's the fire that initiates something. — Adapted from K. Robert Schwarz’s notes for the all Tania León recording “Indigena” on CRI, now available on New World Records NWCR662. Ê 1978, © 1994 Composers recordings, Inc., © 2007 Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc., www.newworldrecords.org; www.dramonline.org

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