BALADA, LEONARDO  BIOGRAPHY

Balada is a superb orchestrator
American Record Guide (Allen Gimbel) March/April 2001

A very effective tribute to a composer of wide reach and real aural imagination.
Balada certainly deserves the attention that Naxos has been giving him.
ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

Born in Barcelona on 22nd September, 1933, Leonardo Balada graduated at the Conservatorio del Liceu in his hometown, and in 1960 at the Juilliard School in New York. He also studied composition with Vincent Persichetti and Aaron Copland and conducting with Igor Markevitch. Since 1970 he has been teaching at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he is University Professor of Composition. Some of his best known works were written in a dramatic avant-garde style in the 1960s, including Guernica, María Sabina and Steel Symphony. He is credited with pioneering a blending of ethnic music with avant-garde techniques later, notably in his Sinfonía en Negro-Homage to Martin Luther King of 1968, and Homage to Casals and Sarasate in 1975.

Balada's works are performed by the leading orchestras throughout the world, under conductors of the highest distinction. Leonardo Balada has received commissions for new works from many outstanding organizations in the United States and in Europe. He has also composed works for artists including Alicia de Larrocha, the American Brass Quintet, Andrés Segovia, Narciso Yepes, Lucero Tena and Angel Romero and has collaborated with artists and writers like Salvador Dalí and Nobel Prize winner Camilo José Cela.

Many of his compositions have been recorded by leading record companies. Balada' s compositions, in addition to chamber and symphonic compositions, include cantatas, two chamber operas and three full length operas, Zapata and Christopher Columbus. The last was given its first performance in Barcelona in 1989 with Jose Carreras and Montserrat Caballé singing the leading rôles and attracted international attention and wide critical acclaim.

For more information, please visit Leonardo Balada'swebsite.