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Leanna Primiani

Composer

Variety’s Jon Burlingame says, “One of the most remarkable TV-movie scores of the past season... I was so impressed with her music... I look forward to more work by this talented composer.”

Gaudete for Orchestra
6:27

Program Note

Gaudete for Orchestra is a 6-minute extravaganza celebrating the holiday season. The work is based on the oldest of Christmas carols, Gaudete et exsultate (Rejoice and Be Glad), believed to have been composed in the 16th century. Gaudete for Orchestra also weaves several traditional holiday melodies throughout the work including Joy to the World, Carol of the Bells and We Three Kings.

Gaudete for Orchestra is framed on the scaffold of time, both at the micro and macro levels. Leanna creates an overarching musical structure using the concept of the Fibonacci sequence and the Golden Ratio (f). This idea of ‘divine proportion’ found in patterns of nature balances sections and the climax of the work according to time itself, rather than on the number of notes or measures.

  • Written: 2020

  • Duration: 6-7 minutes

  • Instrumentation: 2(dble pic.), 2, 2, 2; 2, 2, ; timp. +1(sleigh bells, tri, fr. drm, glock); strings

  • Premiere: December 10, 2020 by John Devlin and the Wheeling Symphony

Biography

Variety’s Jon Burlingame says, “One of the most remarkable TV-movie scores of the past season... I was so impressed with her music... I look forward to more work by this talented composer.”

Armed with a pencil, paper, and modular synthesizers, composer and Arturia Artist Leanna Primiani's music oscillates between electronic modernism and orchestral abstraction across the classical, film, and ambient electronic music genres. Each musical expression parallels her fragmented existence as she works between the concert and Hollywood traditions. What matters most to Leanna is to use her musical voice to advocate for social change, writing works that focus on the issues that matter to her most: human trafficking, gender equality, and juvenile justice.

A featured NPR and Apple Music Classical composer, Leanna has won two Toulmin Commissions from the League of American Orchestras and the American Composers Orchestra. The first commission, Neither Man Nor Money Validate My Worth for Chamber Orchestra, a tone poem dedicated to the survivors of human trafficking, was featured several times on NPR's Performance Today with over 2 million listeners nationwide. The second, VISIONS: Concerto for Orchestra, will be premiered by ROCO in 2026.

Performances of her classical catalog include Carnegie Hall, Omaha Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Nashville Symphony, ROCO, American Composers Orchestra, Bang On A Can Music Festival at MASS MoCA, Wheeling Symphony, Kalamazoo Symphony, UT Wind Ensemble, Midwest Clinic, Seattle Collaborative Orchestra, United Nations 50 for Freedom campaign, International Clarinet Association, National Flute Association, Imani Wind Festival (NYC), Trio 212 in NYC, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Harvard Women’s Choral Festival, Atlanta Chamber Players, and the Hear/Now Festival in LA. In addition, Leanna was a featured composer at the 2021 Taiwan International Flute Festival and a composer-in-residence at The Millay Colony for the Arts in Upstate New York.

Leanna's recent film credits include Lifetime’s BAD franchise (McKenna Grace, Rob Lowe, Melissa Joann Hart), Fantasia FF runaway hit experimental horror short Ivory Wave, WIF/Fox Searchlight production of Signal, the award-winning feature documentary Altitude Not Attitude. Variety’s Jon Burlingame calls the music “one of the most remarkable… scores of the past season.” Her training as a classical composer and her fluency in composing orchestral works, coupled with her talents in electronic synthesis,  gives Leanna an advantage few other composers can boast of when scoring media.


Leanna earned a masters from UCLA and a doctorate in composition from USC and has studied with such noted composers and conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Peter Eötvös, Morten Lauridsen, Tom Salta, and Howard Shore. She is a voting member of the Recording Arts Academy, Television Academy, as well as a member of BMI, New York Women Composers, The Alliance of Women Film Composers, and The Society of Composers and Lyricists. 

Representation
Trudy Chan
Classical music rep
Black Tea Music