Leah Reid
Biography
Leah Reid is a composer, sound artist, researcher, and educator whose works range from opera, chamber, and vocal music to acousmatic, electroacoustic, and interactive sound installations. Her primary research focuses on the perception, modeling, and compositional applications of timbre, which she uses as a catalyst to explore new soundscapes, time, space, perception, and color. Critics have described her music as “immersive,” “haunting,” and “shimmering.”Reid has received international recognition for her compositions, highlighted by a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship and the American Prize in Composition. Her works have won numerous first prizes in major competitions, including the Galaxies 6th International New Vision Composition Competition, Musicworks’ Electronic Music Competition, the 8th KLANG! International Electroacoustic Composition Competition, the Gaetano Amadeo Prize, the Schubert Konservatorium International Composer Competition, and the Tesselat Electronic Music Competition. She has also been honored with Musicworks’ Marcelle Deschênes Prize in Electronic Music, Sound of the Year’s Composed with Sound Award, and the Pauline Oliveros Prize from the International Alliance for Women in Music. Additional distinctions include second prizes in the Iannis Xenakis International Electronic Music Competition and the 13th International Destellos Competition, as well as awards and recognitions from Ars Electronica, Musicacoustica-Hangzhou, and the Luigi Nono International Prize, among others. She has received fellowships from the Guerilla Opera Company, Transient Canvas, Copland House, the Hambidge Center, MacDowell, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), the Ucross Foundation, and Yaddo.
Her collaborations and commissions include ensembles and performers such as Accordant Commons, Blow Up Percussion, the Boston New Music Initiative Ensemble, Concavo & Convesso, Ensemble Móbile, Excelsis, Guerilla Opera, JACK Quartet, McGill’s Contemporary Music Ensemble, Neave Trio, the Piedmont Duo, Sound Gear, Talea, and Yarn/Wire. Most recently, she was awarded a prestigious Barlow Commission for a forthcoming work with the Grossman Ensemble. Reid has also collaborated with choreographers Alessandro Sciarroni, Lydia Hance of Frame Dance Productions, Kim Brooks Mata, and Kimberleigh Holman of Luminarium Dance Company, as well as media artist Mona Kasra and scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Reid’s music has been presented at major international festivals and venues, including Espacios Sonoros (Argentina), Festival Mujeres en la Música Nueva (Colombia), MUSLAB: After (Ecuador), Série de Música de Câmara and Caravana da Síntese Sonora (Brazil), REF—Resilience Festival and the Matera Intermedia Festival (Italy), International Composition Competition of Electronic Music Iannis Xenakis (Greece), IRCAM’s ManiFeste, PAYSAGES | COMPOSÉS, and Klang! électroacoustique (France), EviMus and Forgotten Spaces: EuroMicrofest (Germany), BEAST FEaST, Sonic Voyages, Open Circuit, Acousmatic Transcendence, and the University of Aberdeen Concert Series (United Kingdom), Festival Mixtur (Spain), Soochow New Voice Concert Series and MUSICACOUSTICA-HANGZHOU (China), the OUA Electroacoustic Music Festival, Prix Russolo, and Osaka University of Arts (Japan), the International Computer Music Conference (USA, Ireland, and Chile), Tilde New Music Festival (Australia), and the Workshop on Computer Music and Audio Technology (Taiwan), among many others.
Her compositions appear on leading contemporary music labels, including the Society of Composers (SCI) CD Series (PARMA Recordings), Ablaze Records’ Electronic Masters series, RMN Classical’s Electroacoustic & Beyond and In Focus collections, Musicworks’ Magazine CDs, Skyjack Records, MUSLAB & Cero Records, and MicroFolia. Works such as Jouer for percussion and electronics, Reverie for fixed media, Sk(etch) for fixed media, and Single Fish for three sopranos and hand percussion, among others, have been released across these platforms. Her scholarship has appeared in SCI Journal (Apple) and Leonardo, including the article “Composing with Multidimensional Timbre Representations” (2021).
She currently serves as Vice President of the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) and as Vice President for Programs and Projects for the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS). From 2023 to 2025, she also served on the board of the Boston New Music Initiative (BNMI) as Artistic Director.
Reid received her D.M.A. and M.A. in music composition from Stanford University and her B.Mus from McGill University. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, where she teaches courses in composition and technology to undergraduate and graduate students.