Cuban composer Tania León will receive the Ibero-American Tomás Luis de Victoria award in Madrid

October 9, 2024

Cuban composer Tania León will receive the XIX SGAE Prize for Ibero-American Music Tomás Luis de Victoria in Madrid at a tribute concert on October 14 at the Manuel de Falla Hall, at 7:00PM.

The prolific creator, who has received numerous international recognitions, such as the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Music or the 2022 Kennedy Center Honors, is the first woman to receive the award.

The Tomás Luis de Victoria prize, endowed with 20,000 euros, is considered the highest public recognition from the Ibero-American community to a living composer, "for having substantially contributed to the enrichment of the musical heritage of Ibero-American peoples through her creative work," said the General Society of Authors and Publishers of Spain (SGAE).

Following Tania León's performance, American Adam Kent will interpret four works by the Cuban composer for piano: "Rondo a la criolla" (ca. 1965); "Momentum" (1984); "Homenage" (2011) and "Tumbao" (2005). Next, a female trio formed exclusively to pay tribute to the award winner and made up of mezzo-soprano Joana Thomé, cellist Iris Azquinezer and pianist Antonia Valente, will perform the piece "Oh Yemanja," from the opera The Scourge of Hyacinths (1994).

The jury decided to award the prize to the Cuban composer "in consideration of her artistic experience, which stands out as a paradigm of intercultural understanding and dialogue, along with the external and internal exiles that, as a Cuban in the United States, have marked her highly internationally recognized compositional output, as well as her position as a human being before the vital coordinates through which her trajectory has unfolded."

Operas, ballets, original music for musical theater and soundtracks, compositions for solo piano and more than 40 chamber, orchestral and vocal works make up Tania León's repertoire, who is also a conductor.

Her music, always politically and socially committed and of a cosmopolitan character, incorporates and combines rhythmic practices, genres and voices from different cultures, derived from the Latin American diaspora, and fused with European techniques in the Caribbean. An authentic journey that "has elevated Latin music in New York," was recognized upon learning of her award.

Previously, Cubans Harold Gramatges (1996) and Leo Brouwer (2010) received the award.