Photo by Laura Banchi, courtesy of The Bogliasco Foundation
Leilehua Lanzilotti (b. 1983) is a composer and multimedia artist whose works often explore dramatic expanses of color and timbre, engaging with themes of place, displacement, and layered time.
Lanzilotti was honored to be a 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist 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, a Native Arts & Cultures Foundation’s SHIFT – Transformative Change and Indigenous Arts Award, and recognition as a 2025 USA Fellow. Lanzilotti has received additional distinguished fellowships & residencies through The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Casa Wabi, the Merwin Conservancy, the McKnight Visiting Composer Residency Program, Copland House, 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), Sonic Arts Biennial (The Netherlands), Un-Earthed: a festival of listening and environment (UK), Ojai Music Festival (USA), and Thailand International Composition Festival; and in halls such as the Philharmonie de Paris and Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre. In fall 2025 Lanzilotti’s “luminous new piece” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker), of light and stone opened the New York Philharmonic’s season and Gustavo Dudamel’s first concert as the orchestra’s Music & Artistic Director designate. Lanzilotti’s work has also been championed in frequent performances by Roomful of Teeth (USA), Sō Percussion (USA), Extended Music Collective (Belgium), Ensemble Three (Australia), and others worldwide.
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 also premiered and recorded Dai Fujikura’s Viola Concerto Wayfinder as a soloist with the Nagoya Philharmonic, Keita Matsui, conductor. 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.
As an experimental sound artist, Lanzilotti’s projects include performing with object instruments created by Isamu Noguchi, Toshiko Takaezu, Harry Bertoia, Adam Morford and Maika Garnica; and with Gahlord Dewald as a member of The Yes &. Lanzilotti was part of the inaugural cohort of Wehiwehi, a residency-based gathering of Native Hawaiian artists working at the intersection of indigeneity & contemporary performance supported by the Doris Duke Foundation, and hosted at Shangri La Museum in Honolulu, Hawai’i. Additionally, Lanzilotti is part of the network of musicians and artists in the Wandelweiser collective.
Lanzilotti’s multimedia work has been shown in The Noguchi Museum; Cranbrook Art Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison; the Honolulu Museum of Art; Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre, Cyprus; and Alison Jacques Art Gallery, London, UK.
As a scholar, Lanzilotti’s written publications include contributions to the monograph Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within (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 (Les presses du réel), 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.
A dedicated educator, Dr. 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, Co-director of Open Space Festival of New Music, and Assistant Professor of Viola; and various international summer festivals such as the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity INTERPLAY program. Additionally, Lanzilotti created Shaken Not Stuttered, a free online resource demonstrating extended techniques for strings.
Lanzilotti is a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory of Music (BMus), Yale School of Music (MMus), and Manhattan School of Music (DMA). 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