United States
Pennsylvania, 1983
Leilehua Lanzilotti is a Kanaka Maoli composer / sound artist dedicated to the arts of our time. Lanzilotti’s practice explores radical indigenous contemporaneity, integrating community engagement into the heart of projects.
Lanzilotti was honored to be a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Music for with eyes the color of time (string orchestra), which the Pulitzer committee called, “a vibrant composition . . . that distinctly combines experimental string textures and episodes of melting lyricism.”
As a recording artist, Lanzilotti has played on albums from Björk’s Vulnicura Live and Joan Osborne’s Love and Hate, to David Lang’s anatomy theater. Lanzilotti has premiered many new works including Wayfinder – a viola concerto by Dai Fujikura inspired by Polynesian wayfinding, for which they will be a soloist for the orchestral premiere with the Nagoya Philharmonic in spring 2024.
Lanzilotti has collaborated with The Noguchi Museum on several commissions, writing compositions honoring Noguchi sculptures in conjunction with installations. Most recently, the work beyond the accident of time (2019), for percussion and voices, honors Noguchi’s never – fully – realized Bell Tower for Hiroshima (1951). A text version of this score is included in Walking from Scores, a bilingual anthology of text and graphic scores to be used while walking, from Fluxus to the critical works of current artists, through the tradition of experimental music and performance. “Lanzilotti’s score brings us together across the world in remembrance, through the commitment of shared sonic gestures.” (Cities & Health)
A new work project in collaboration with The Noguchi Museum and the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation will include a concert program of works, and multimedia installation piece, and an essay contribution to a monograph honoring the life and work of Toshiko Takaezu to be published by Yale University Press.
