Identity has always been central to the music of composer and pianist Gabriela Lena Frank. Born in Berkeley, California, to a mother of mixed Peruvian and Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian and Jewish descent, Frank explores her multicultural heritage through her compositions. Frank currently serves as composer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The Washington Post has named her as one of the thirty-five most significant women composers in history.

Inspired by the works of Béla Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Frank has traveled extensively throughout South America in creative exploration. Her music often reflects her own personal experience as a multi-racial Latina, but also reflects her studies of Latin American cultures. She also incorporates poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own. Frank says that there is usually a story line behind her music—such as a scenario or character. While the enjoyment of her works can be obtained solely from the music itself, Frank’s program notes are designed to enhance the listener’s experience. Her compositions also reflect her virtuosity as a pianist. In addition to her work as a composer, she is a sought-after performer who specializes in contemporary repertoire.

In 2020, Frank was a recipient of the prestigious 25th anniversary Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanity category with an unrestricted cash prize of 250,000 dollars, a meaningful portion of which was donated to the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. The award recognized her for breaking gender, disability, and cultural barriers in the classical music industry, and for her work as an activist on behalf of emerging composers of all demographics and aesthetics. Winner of a Latin Grammy and nominated for Grammys as both a composer and a pianist, she also holds a Guggenheim Fellowship and a USA Artist Fellowship, which is given each year to fifty of the country’s finest artists. Frank has been the subject of several scholarly books and numerous television documentaries. She is regularly commissioned by luminaries such as cellist Yo Yo Ma, soprano Dawn Upshaw, the King’s Singers, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano with guitarist Manuel Barrueco, Brooklyn Rider, and conductors Marin Alsop and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. In the 2018–19 school year, she also became visiting artist-in-residence at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, adding to her long list of residencies at universities and conservatories through the United States.

Civic outreach is an essential part of Frank’s work. She has volunteered extensively in hospitals and prisons, with her current focus on developing the school music program at Anderson Valley High School, a rural public school of modest means with a large Latino population in Boonville, California.

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The appearance of Gabriela Lena Frank is made possible by a generous gift from the Country Music Association Foundation.