There's No Labeling Composer and Conductor Tania Leon

(first published in The Cincinnati Post Jan. 13, 1992)

Don't try to label composer Tania Leon.

Born in Cuba, she has lived in New York since the 1960s. She grew up in a poor neighborhood in Havana, amid the sound of the cha-cha and the mambo.

She discovered classical music at an early age.

"By the time I was 4, I used to go to the radio and look for the classical stations," she said. "My grandmother took me to the conservatory and said, 'She likes this; please take her.' "

They did, and when she was 5 her Chinese grandfather gave her a piano.

Ms. Leon, whose "Carabali" will be given its world premiere by the Cincinnati Symphony led by music director Jesús López-Cobos this weekend at Music Hall, counts Chinese, French, Spanish and Afro-Cubans among her immediate ancestors.

Her music reflects Latin, Afro-Cuban, Asian and American influences.

"I have everybody. I can't deny any part of me," she says, but adds that there's no difference between what she does and what other artists do: "They all speak what they like to speak best, and it always has to do with their background."

After graduating from Havana's National Conservatory and coming to New York, Ms. Leon met a man "who turned my life upside down," Arthur Mitchell, founder of the Dance Theater of Harlem.

She became the Dance Theater's first music director, first composer-in- residence and first conductor.

"It was God-given," she said, "because when I came here I was just a pianist."

She honed her conducting skills at Tanglewood, where she worked with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa.

She is now professor of composition and conducting at Brooklyn College, music director of the college orchestra and a busy guest conductor in the U.S. and Europe.

Musical theater has been important in of Ms. Leon's life.

She was music director for Broadway's "The Wiz" and composer and conductor for Robert Wilson's "The Golden Windows"; in December, she led the revival of Scott Joplin's "Treemonisha" at New York's Town Hall.

"What I do is very eclectic. I move from chamber music to symphonic, theater, ballet, opera, you name it." In March she will lead the Beethovenhalle Orchestra in Bonn, Germany.

Working with López-Cobos, a native of Spain, has been rewarding, she said, "because it's my first collaboration with a conductor whose roots I recognize immediately.

"I felt very comfortable writing all these energetic rhythms for him."

Meeting López-Cobos' wife Alicia was comfortable, too, she said, since Mrs. López-Cobos also was born in Cuba.

"I didn't know this until I met her here. We had a wonderful afternoon in New York remembering things we know so well."

"Carabali," which the CSO will repeat at Carnegie Hall March 9, is the first in a series of commissions anticipating the CSO's 1994-95 centennial.

Named for a Congolese tribe brought to the Americas during the era of slavery, the work celebrates "a type of spirit that cannot be broken," Ms. Leon said.

"These people were very hard to dominate. Some of them escaped and went to the mountains or the forest."

Tania Leon's "Carabali" will be premiered by the CSO at 11 a.m. Friday and 8:30 p.m. Saturday at Music Hall. Tickets: $8.50-$43.50 (381-3300).