In preparation for the Kennedy Center Honors last year, when Tania León was among the artists chosen to receive this distinguished award, The Washington Post’s music critic Michael Andor Brodeur published a profile describing her as “an unstoppable force in expanding the possibilities of what American ‘classical’ music can—and ought to—sound like.” Only the year before, León had won the Pulitzer Prize in Music for Stride. Along with orchestral compositions, her oeuvre ranges from works for solo piano and chamber ensemble to vocal and choral pieces and the opera Scourge of Hyacinths (1994), inspired by a radio play by the Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka. 

León became the first in her family to embark on a musical career. Her grandmother discovered her interest, as a girl of four, in classical radio, and arranged for music lessons. Young Tania began studying at the conservatory in her native Havana and harbored the dream of pursuing a career as a concert pianist. She left Cuba near the end of the first decade of Fidel Castro’s regime, flying to the United States in 1967 as a refugee. 

Though she had intended to make her way to Paris, León quickly found an outlet for her talents in New York. She continued her studies there and began collaborating with the dancer Arthur Mitchell as pianist and music director of the trailblazing Dance Theatre of Harlem, which he had recently founded. It was in this role that León started discovering her voice as a composer, initially writing ballet scores for the blossoming company. Ursula Mamlok and later Leonard Bernstein became important mentors. León is herself an influential educator and, through her longstanding relationship with the New York Philharmonic and other institutions, has played a significant role in promoting new music and advocating for underrepresented voices. 

The New York Philharmonic invited León to contribute to Project 19, a series of 19 new works commemorating the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, through which women gained the right to vote. To prepare for Stride, León researched the life and work of the social reformer Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), whose activism paved the way toward this posthumous victory. The composer notes that she was inspired by what she discovered of “the inner force” that drove Anthony. Contrary to her usual practice, León sought a title before starting composition. “The word ‘stride’ reflected how I imagined her way of not taking ‘no' for an answer,” León writes. “She kept pushing and pushing and moving forward, walking with firm steps until she got the whole thing done. That is precisely what I mean by Stride. Something that is moving forward.”

IN THE COMPOSER'S WORDS

“Stride has some of what, to me, are American musical influences, or at least American musical connotations. For example, there is a section where you can hear the horns with the wa-wa plunger, reminiscent of Louis Armstrong, getting that growl. It doesn’t have to be indicative of any particular skin tone; it has to do with the American spirit.  When I discovered American music, Louis Armstrong actually was the first sound that struck me. When I moved here, the only composers I knew anything about were Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin. The night I arrived at Kennedy Airport, I was picked up by a Cuban couple from the Bronx, who allowed me to stay on their sofa. I looked at the stairs outside of their building, and I started crying ‘Maria!’ They were confused, and I explained that in Cuba I’d heard the song by Leonard Bernstein. I later worked with Bernstein, and we were very close in his later years. When I first arrived here I couldn’t speak English ... but I knew how to say ‘Maria.’”

Scored for 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, a large percussion section, harp, and strings

− Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony's program annotator.

Featured on Elgar's Enigma — February 22 to 24, 2024

Nashville Symphony
Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor
Jennifer Koh, violin 

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