Gabriela Lena Frank

Composer-in-Residence, The Philadelphia Orchestra

Speaking at Opening Session and Gold Baton Award

Soon to finish her long tenure as Composer-in-Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra with the premiere of Picaflor (Marin Alsop, conductor) in the spring of 2025, identity has always been at the center of composer/pianist Gabriela Lena Frank’s music. Her exploration of her indigenous-Peruvian, Chinese, and Lithuanian heritages has placed her on the Washington Post’s list of the most significant women composers in history. More recently, her Spanish-language opera, El último sueño de Frida y Diego, commissioned and premiered to sold-out audiences by San Diego Opera and San Francisco Opera in the 2022-2023 season, was hailed as a major landmark of contemporary opera, “[revealing] a significant music-theatre talent. Frank, a Berkeley native, has mastered the intricacies of operatic construction on her first attempt, producing a confident, richly imagined score that is free of lapses and longueurs.” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker)

In 2017, Gabriela founded the award-winning, Mellon Foundation-supported Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music (GLFCAM), a training institution held on her two rural properties in Boonville, CA for emerging composers from a broad array of demographics and aesthetics. Additionally, civic outreach is an essential part of Gabriela’s work, and she has volunteered extensively in hospitals and prisons; her current focus is on developing the music offerings for the largely Latino student population of Boonville public schools.

In recent years, Gabriela has become a climate activist, becoming certified as a naturalist through the University of California, and she also reflects environmental ideals in her work, such as Pachamama meets an ode premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra (Yannick Nezét-Seguín, conductor) at Carnegie Hall, and in GLFCAM programs, such as Composing Earth.

Gabriela’s life as a cultural witness has been profiled in multiple PBS documentaries. She will be newly featured in the documentary, Beethoven’s Nine, released internationally by Riddle Films in May 2024 and directed by Academy-nominated filmmaker, Larry Weinstein.