The Lehigh University Composers Forum (June 22-29, 2014) announces guest mentor-composer, Grammy-Award nominee Tania León. The Lehigh Choral Composers Forum, in association with the ACDA, offers a unique opportunity to composers of all levels to explore and develop their compositional voices in a weeklong intensive seminar held at Lehigh University’s beautiful Zoellner Arts Center, during which Tania León and Steven Sametz will offer their support and mentorship.

Tania León, a Cuban-born composer and conductor, is recognized for her accomplishments as an educator and advisor to arts organizations. She has been profiled on ABC, CBS, CNN, PBS, Univision, Telemundo, and independent films.

León’s opera, Scourge of Hyacinths, which is based on a play by Wole Soyinka with staging and design by Robert Wilson, received over 20 performances throughout Europe and Mexico. Commissioned by Hans Werner Henze and the city of Munich for the Fourth Munich Biennale, it took home the coveted BMW Prize. The aria “Oh Yemanja” (“Mother’s Prayer”) was recorded by Dawn Upshaw on her Nonesuch CD, “The World So Wide.”

Commissions include works for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, New World Symphony, Koussevitzky Foundation, Fest der Kontinente (Hamburg, Germany), Cincinnati Symphony, National Endowment for the Arts, NDR Sinfonie Orchester, American Composers Orchestra, The Library of Congress, Ensemble Modern, The Los Angeles Master Chorale, and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, among others.

Her works have been performed by such orchestras as the Gewaundhausorchester, L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the China National Symphony, and the NDR Orchestra. She has collaborated with authors and directors including John Ashbury, Margaret Atwood, Rita Dove, Jamaica Kincaid, Mark Lamos, Julie Taymor, and Derek Walcott.

Sametz was recently named a candidate to the prestigious  United States Fulbright Specialist program, which send mentor-teachers in their fields abroad to partner with  academic institutions. Sametz is  the first Lehigh University faculty member to be named a Fulbright Specialist.

The Fulbright Specialist Program (FSP) promotes linkages between U.S. scholars and professionals and their counterparts at host institutions overseas.  The program awards grants to qualified U.S. faculty and professionals, in select disciplines, to engage in short-term collaborative two- to six-week projects at eligible institutions in over 140 countries worldwide.  Shorter grant lengths give Specialists greater flexibility to pursue projects that work best with their current academic or professional commitments.

Find out more about the Fulbright Specialist program here.

Sametz has been named the recipient of the 2013 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Music Composition Prize presented by the University of Connecticut.  The prize is awarded based on past works and a proposal to create new work for chorus and orchestra to be premiered by the University of Connecticut Chorus.  The proposed work, A Child’s Requiem,  will set the writings of young children to create a response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton Connecticut in 2012.   The work will be premiered in 2015 in Connecticut and will be accompanied by an exhibition of drawings by children expressing their response to loss.

Read the official press release here.