Photo by Laura Banchi, courtesy of The Bogliasco Foundation
Leilehua Lanzilotti is a composer, multimedia artist, and curator whose collaborators span from contemporary art museums to physical oceanographers and community cultural organizations.
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.” Other prestigious honors Lanzilotti has received include a Creative Capital Award, recognition as a 2025 USA Fellow, and a Native Arts & Cultures Foundation’s SHIFT – Transformative Change and Indigenous Arts Award. Lanzilotti has received additional distinguished fellowships & residencies through The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Casa Wabi, the Merwin Conservancy, the McKnight Visiting Composer Residency Program, and the MacGeorge Fellowship at the University of Melbourne among others.
As a composer, Lanzilotti’s works have been presented at international festivals such as Ars Electronica (Austria), Thailand International Composition Festival, and Dots+Loops—Australia's post-genre music and arts series; and in halls such as the Philharmonie de Paris and Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre. Additionally, Lanzilotti is part of the network of musicians and artists in the Wandelweiser collective.
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 works including Wayfinder—a viola concerto by Dai Fujikura inspired by Polynesian wayfinding. in manus tuas, Lanzilotti’s solo viola album debut, was featured in The Boston Globe’s Top 10 classical albums of 2019 and Bandcamp’s Best Contemporary Classical Albums of 2019, and was called “an entrancing new album” by The New Yorker’s Alex Ross.
As an experimental sound artist, Lanzilotti’s projects include performing with object instruments created by Adam Morford and Maika Garnica; and with Gahlord Dewald as a member of The Yes &. Lanzilotti has performed on sculptures by Toshiko Takaezu, Harry Bertoia, and Isamu Noguchi in both private collections and museums spaces across the United States.
Lanzilotti’s curatorial work extends from museum collaborations such as the currently touring Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within, to institutional commissioning at EMPAC as the Curator of Music.
As a part of a larger body of work drawing from Lanzilotti’s Kanaka Maoli heritage, Lanzilotti’s single-channel video installation, the sky in our hands, our hands in the sky, honors the wahi pana (translated literally as, “places with a heartbeat” in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi) featured throughout. The work is currently on tour through 2026, having opened at The Noguchi Museum then traveling to Cranbrook Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The tour continues to the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison (September 8–December 23, 2025), and the Honolulu Museum of Art (February 13–July 26, 2026).
As an educator, Lanzilotti has been on the faculty at the New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development; University of Northern Colorado as the Director and founder of the experimental UNCOmmon Ensemble; and University of Hawaiʻi. Other teaching appearances as a guest faculty include at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Additionally, Lanzilotti created Shaken Not Stuttered, a free online resource demonstrating extended techniques for strings.
Written publications include contributions to a monograph on Toshiko Takaezu (Yale University Press), and to Tuning Calder’s Clouds edited by Vic Brooks and Jennifer Burris (Calder Foundation and Athénée Press)—the first book to explore the artistic, technological, and political intersections of Alexander Calder’s sculptural Acoustic Ceiling. Lanzilotti’s musical work beyond the accident of time (2019) 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.
Dr. Lanzilotti is a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Yale School of Music, and Manhattan School of Music. In addition, Lanzilotti was an orchestral fellow in the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and New World Symphony, participated in the Lucerne Festival Academy under Pierre Boulez, and was the original violist in the Lucerne Festival Alumni Ensemble. Mentors include Hiroko Primrose, Peter Slowik, Jesse Levine, Martin Bresnick, Wilfried Strehle, Karen Ritscher, and Reiko Füting.
Pronunciation: Leilehua