Leanna Primiani, Composer

Composer and Arturia Artist Leanna Primiani’s music oscillates between electronic modernism and orchestral abstraction across the classical, film and ambient electronic music genres. Armed with a pencil, paper, and modular synthesizers, each musical expression parallels her fragmented existence as she works between the concert and Hollywood traditions.

A featured NPR and Apple Music Classical composer, Leanna won the 2020 Toulmin Commission from the League of American Orchestras, ROCO and The American Composers Orchestra to compose Neither Man Nor Money Validate My Worth for Chamber Orchestra, a tone poem dedicated to the survivors of human trafficking. This work was recently featured on NPR's Performance Today with over 2 million listeners nationwide.

Performances of her catalog include the Rochester Philharmonic, Nashville Symphony, ROCO, American Composers Orchestra, Bang On A Can Music Festival at MASS MoCA, Wheeling Symphony, Kalamazoo Symphony, UT Wind Ensemble, Midwest Clinic, Cabrillo Festival, Seattle Collaborative Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, United Nations 50 for Freedom campaign, International Clarinet Association (Belgium and the USA), National Flute Association, Imani Wind Festival (NYC), Trio 212 in NYC, June In Buffalo, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Harvard Women’s Choral Festival, Atlanta Chamber Players, Vox Musica, Ensemble Mo (FR), and the Commandaria Orchestra Chamber Music Series (CY) and the Hear/Now Festival in LA. In addition, Leanna was a featured composer at the Taiwan International Flute Festival and a composer-in-residence at The Millay Colony for the Arts in Upstate NY.

Leanna's recent film credits include The Bad Seed Returns, written by and starring Mckenna Grace for Lifetime/A&E, Fantasia FF runaway hit experimental horror short Ivory Wave, WIF/Fox Searchlight production of Signal, the award-winning feature documentary Altitude Not Attitude, as well as the remake of the cult classic The Bad Seed, directed by and starring Rob Lowe. Variety’s Jon Burlingame calls the music “one of the most remarkable… scores of the past season.” Her training as a classical composer and her fluency with large-scale orchestral scores coupled with her talents in electronic synthesis give Leanna an advantage few other composers can boast of when scoring film.

A native Californian, Leanna currently splits her time between Santa Monica and New York. She earned a doctorate in composition from USC and has studied with such noted composers and conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Peter Eotvos, Steven Stucky, Morten Lauridsen, and Howard Shore. She is a voting member of the Recording Arts Academy and Television Academy, member of BMI, New York Women Composers, The Alliance of Women Film Composers, and The Society of Composers and Lyricists.

 

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