Leon, T :: Pet's Suite

Tania Leon is a vital new music personality, highly regarded as a composer, a conductor, and an educator. Her work is noted as the melding of high academia with deep folk roots, as art of the highest order [Boston Phoenix review]. Her compositions for flute and piano have received critical acclaim, from her 2007 Alma (filled with dancing rhythms and strange shards of jazz) to her 2014 del Caribe, Soy!, with its Caribbean sea-breeze pointillism and swooping Latin gestures.

Pet s Suite, for flute and piano, is an earlier piece, written in 1979, and filled with humor and Leon s signature sense of playful academia paired with a unique understanding of harmony. Eight individual movements - ranging from half a minute in length to five or more minutes - exist as tone poems on the small creatures one encounters as, of course, pets. Leon s use of extended technique for brilliant, charming color, and darting melodies hidden amongst long pastoral phrases, suits the subject matter brilliantly. A tight ensemble between professional flutist and pianist is required to effectively perform.