Gabriela Lena Frank

Gabriela Lena Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Something of a musical anthropologist, she has traveled extensively throughout South America and her pieces reflect and refract her studies of Latin American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own.

This season, Frank serves as a composer-in-residence to both the Houston Symphony and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. A 2009 recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship to assist in research and artistic creation, Frank has recently premiered music with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Berkeley Symphony, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. A frequent collaborator with artists in other disciplines, Frank has developed a number of projects with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Cuban playwright Nilo Cruz.

Frank attended Rice University in Houston, Texas, where she earned both a B.A. and M.A. She also received a D.M.A. in composition from the University of Michigan.