composer - performer - improviser
Glass shards and pinecones, glaciers, boxspring mattresses, a flock of accordions, circular saw blades, viola, the erhu, hyenas and whales and elk, Cheryl E. Leonard’s music finds its raw materials just about anywhere. From these diverse sources come works that embrace the spectrum of musical possibilities: improvised to composed, acoustic to electronic, diaphanous to bombastic, notes to noise. Many of Leonard’s works explore subtle textures and intricacies in sounds not generally considered musical. These investigations often include the creation of instruments, primarily from found materials. Her other major interests include collaboration across artistic disciplines, site-specific compositions and instruments, guerrilla performance, and developing new relationships between artists and audiences.
Cheryl holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MA from Mills College, both in music composition. She has studied composition and electronic music with Alvin Curran, Chris Brown, George Lewis, Frederic Rzewski, Laeticia Sonami, Salvatore Maccia, and Alan Bonde; and performance art with Moira Roth, Carole E. Schneemann, and Betsy Damon.
Leonard’s compositions have been performed at Sushi Gallery, Highways, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the San Francisco Butoh Festival, the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival, SoundCulture 96, and the National Conference of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the U.S., among others. Her work with natural object instruments has been featured on KQED TV's local arts show Spark, the Hallmark Network's New Morning Show and CBS's Evening Magazine, as well as in Tim Perkis's documentary film Noisy People. In 1999, Leonard's instrument/sculpture The Underwater Flying Machine was shown at Lincoln Center’s Day of Homemade Instruments in NYC. She is the recipient of an ASCAP Foundation Grant to Young Composers, the Elizabeth Mills Crothers Composition Prize, a Meet the Composer Grant, the American Composer's Forum Subito grant and a William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Honorary Fellowship. She has been awarded residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Engine 27, Villa Montalvo, and The Lab (with RK Corral), and has been honored in New Langton Art's Bay Area Awards Show. Recordings of her music are available from Ubuibi, Great Hoary Marmot Music, Pax Recordings, Apraxia Records, 23 Five Inc, Old Gold Records and The Lab.
Cheryl's many collaborations with artists from other disciplines include: composing the soundtrack for Rajendra Serber's Space Western film Good Guy Bad Guy, three projects (Fable, Good Guy Bad Guy, Eenie Macy and the Ten Step Program) with the interdisciplinary ensemble RK Corral, the creation of an interactive sculpture, The Making Smashing Machine, with Swedish sculptor Anna Hallin; and numerous works for dance and video. She recently finished designing and creating sounds for the Monterey Bay Aquarium's new Ocean's Edge exhibit. Cheryl has also spent many years performing and improvising with various experimental ensembles and noise bands, touring Japan, Canada, and the U.S. in the process.
Leonard is presently mixing down recordings of Instruments in Trees and Light Put Carefully. Her other current projects include Music for Rocks and Water and occasionally performing with Big City Orchestra. In addition to her musical endeavours Leonard is a mountaineer, studies aikido and Chinese landscape painting, and collects pinecones with handles.
