“Leanna’s music to be rooted in technical excellence, while also helping to define the future of compositional exploration. Her works are energizing for the musicians, resonate with the widest of audiences, and still manage to be boundary-pushing.” – John Devlin, conductor

Leanna Primiani is a musical storyteller. Transforming traditional narratives, she writes music that changes how listeners see themselves and the world around them. Using electronics as well as orchestral instrumentation, she explores the limits of musical form, sound, and time.

Starting out as a conductor, with credits including the National Symphony and LA Opera, she never imagined that composition would take over her life. Leanna channeled her kinesthetic experience of music-making as a conductor into her writing, with her music being championed by the Nashville Symphony, the Cabrillo Music Festival, and the Centre de Création Musicale Iannis Xenakis (Paris).

Taking her story-telling further, she composes for film and television. Credits include the WIF/Fox Searchlight production of Signal, as well as the remake of the cult classic The Bad Seed, directed by and starring Rob Lowe. Variety’s Jon Burlingame calls the music “one of the most remarkable… scores of the past season.”

Past performances of her catalog include the Nashville Symphony, Cabrillo Festival, Seattle Collaborative Orchestra, American Composer’s Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, International Clarinet Association (Belgium), National Flute Association, Imani Wind Festival (NYC), June In Buffalo, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Harvard Women’s Choral Festival, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Atlanta Chamber Players, Vox Musica, Ensemble Mo (FR), Ensemble Aventure (GER) and the Cyprus Artist Series (CY). Upcoming performances include Hear/Now Festival, International Clarinet Association (USA), and ROCO in Houston. She is a 2020 recipient of the League of American Orchestra’s Women Composers Commissions supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation.

A native Californian, Leanna currently splits her time between New York and Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. She earned a doctorate in composition from USC and has studied with Leonard Slatkin, Peter Eötvös, Steven Stucky, and Morten Lauridsen. She is a member of BMI, the Recording and Television Academies, New York Women Composers, The Alliance of Women Film Composers and The Society of Composers and Lyricists.