As a child, Leilehua Lanzilotti made a playground of The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, where her mother was the curator of education. Leilehua romped in gardens filled with kinetic sculptures and spent hours in the installation of David Hockney’s set for the Ravel opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges, in which the music played on loop. She recalls: “This blend of native plants and rock formations in the garden, natural sounds of the outdoors, and contemporary art all seeped into my sound world in ways that continue to influence my voice as a composer.”
It’s a picture-perfect example of how early exposure can fuel a child’s interest in art. And it’s one that Lanzilotti repaid in her work for string orchestra with eyes the color of time, a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize. Movements of the piece were inspired by artworks in the museum she knew so well, with its main title taken from the Ravel opera that echoed in her ears.
Lanzilotti aspires to carry the sense of playfulness she enjoyed—a feeling that contemporary art was always accessible—to audiences as a composer, sound artist, and educator. For New York’s Noguchi Museum she created sending messages for percussion quartet, involving hands-on manipulation of artist Toshiko Takaezu’s “closed forms,” ceramic vessels that encase bits of clay rattles. Interactive installations in the Takaezu retrospective, which Lanzilotti co-curated, prompted visitors to uncover the hidden sound elements of sculpture.
Lanzilotti’s music has been described as atmospheric, textural, and impressionistic, and it often uses sounds from nature. Much inspiration can be traced to the landscapes of Hawaii, where she grew up and still calls home. “Wayfinding, observing nature, and respecting the ocean have been present and important to me since childhood,” she wrote in a program note for on stochastic wave behavior, the piece that Roomful of Teeth performed on a 2022 New York Philharmonic Kravis Nightcap, introducing Lanzilotti to NY Phil audiences. The piece is sung in ’Ōlelo Hawai’i, a language that Lanzilotti says remains new, evolving, changing.
The composer has been intentional about drawing upon her Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) heritage and the multicultural influences that have shaped the island. After some years of identifying professionally as Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, she dropped the first name—European Christian names were ordained by law in Hawaii, she explains, a remnant of colonialism that lingered until 1967. Many Kānaka Maoli carried traditional middle names, and it is Leilehua by which she was known in her community. She speaks often of the Hawaiian diaspora; the most recent US Census found 53 percent of Native Hawaiians live elsewhere, largely for economic reasons. As with Lanzilotti’s use of native language, it is a reminder that Kānaka Maoli remain present, if far-flung.
Lanzilotti began her career as a performer, playing viola in orchestras including the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and on recordings with Björk and other artists. An impactful early experience was a South American tour with the Orchestra of the Americas, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. He conducts the World Premiere of Lanzilotti’s of light and stone on the NY Phil season opener, September 11–16, his first concerts as Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Music & Artistic Director Designate.
The piece reflects on Hawaii’s rich cultural history through four siblings of the Kalākaua royal family, including the last monarch, Queen Lili’uokalani. Lanzilotti has a direct connection through her own family tree: her great-great-grandmother was one of the Queen’s best friends, and they would visit almost every day to sing and play the piano. Lanzilotti draws upon history, blended into her innovative sound world: “I’m a contemporary person making experimental art. At a distance, perhaps it’s beautiful and strange. Listening from different perspectives, one hears the dimensionality of the overtones, or the subtlety of physical movement as air sounds dance around the stage. And if they dig deeper into the inspiration, they might discover that it was inspired by a legacy of people who were curious about the universe, who wanted to uplift their culture and be modern people who were innovating by exploring the latest technology and contemporary modes of expression.”
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