A member of 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 Latino/Latin American mythology, archeology, art, poetry, and folk music into western classical forms, reflecting her Peruvian-Jewish heritage. Such compositions exhibit “honesty and genius” (Springfield Union-News), “unself-conscious craft and mastery” (Washington Post), and “brilliantly effective writing” and “an immediate appeal” (New York Times).

Select premieres in the near future include: The Llama’s to Blame: New Fables for Grammy-winning guitarist Sharon Isbin; Reveries of a Quixotic Bard for the Brentano String Quartet; and The Stone Charango, a work for soprano, two grand pianos, and six percussionists for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella series. As long-term projects, Gabriela is currently crafting several opera libretti on Latin American folkloric and/or contemporary topics, including La Historia Oficial (The Official Story) regarding the disappearance of civilians during Argentina’s “dirty war” of the 1980s and the ongoing protests by the famed Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.

Recent premieres for Gabriela include Jalapeño Blues for the Grammy-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer; Compadrazgo, a cello/piano double concerto for directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center David Finckel and Wu Han; Danza de los Saqsampillos (Songs of Wood) for the Bavarian Opera House; Ritmos Anchinos (2006) for Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project also at Carnegie Hall; and Three Latin American Dances (2004) by the Utah Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Keith Lockhart.

Three Latin American Dances was subsequently recorded by the Utah Symphony for the Reference Recording Label and has been hailed as “dazzling” and exhibiting “wit, brilliance, atmosphere, and poetry (Classics Today), and “a rare treasure of modern orchestral music” (Hong Kong/China Hi Fi Review), among others.

Active as a pianist, her live concert performances have been described as “captivating” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and “splendidly realized” (Raleigh-Durham Spectator). She regular performs, and recent concerts have been with members of the Lydian, Manhattan, and Muir Quartets.

She was a composer-in-residence with the San Francisco Symphony during the season of 2004-2005 for their Adventures in Music program in which the orchestra played her music in a dozen performances to young audiences from the Bay Area. She took up a Music Alive composer’s residency with the Seattle Symphony during the season of 2005-2006, and in the spring of 2006, she accepted a composer’s residency with the Aspen Music Festival through summer 2006. She was recently composer-in-residence with the Nashville Symphony as part of the American Encores series in 2006-2007, and will serve as composer-in-residence with the Fort Worth Symphony in 2007-2008, and with the Indianapolis Symphony in 2008-2009.

Gabriela has been featured and recognized by a number of organizations including ASCAP, the Theodore Presser Music Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. A Global Connections award through Meet the Composer sent her to Brazil in May of 2005 where her flute concerto was performed by the Orquestra Sinfonica da Bahía and principal Lucas Robatto in Salvador-Bahía. In January of 2007, she received a Joyce Foundation Award to commission a new work for the Indianapolis Symphony for the 2008-09 season.

Although a fulltime freelance concert composer, Gabriela also frequently serves as composer-in-residence with academic institutions. In this capacity, she has recently been a guest at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, the Peabody Conservatory, the Mannes College of Music, Rice University, Indiana University in Bloomington, and Cornell University, among others. Gabriela is also a frequent guest at schools and festivals not only in North America but throughout Latin America as well. In 2007, Gabriela will take up a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship in Umbria, Italy.

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. She currently makes her home in the San Francisco Bay Area and travels often in Latin America.