Description: "Acclaimed composer, sought-after conductor, esteemed educator, tireless advocate for the arts--Tania Leâon's achievements encompass but also stretch far beyond contemporary classical music. Alejandro L. Madrid draws on oral history, archival work, and ethnography to offer the first in-depth biography of the artist. Breaking from a chronological account, Madrid looks at Leâon through the issues that have informed and defined moments in her life and her professional works. Leâon's words become a starting ground--but also a counterpoint--to the accounts of the people in her orbit. What emerges is more than an extraordinary portrait of an artist's journey. It is a story of how a human being reacts to the challenges thrown at her by history itself, be it the Cuban revolution or the struggle for civil and individual rights. Nuanced and multifaceted, Tania Leâon's Stride looks at the life, legacy, and milieu that created and sustained one of the most important figures in American classical music"--
Review Quotes: "There is incredible beauty and power in the way this book attends to aesthetics and artists with rigor and care. What sets it apart are Madrid's stunning interviews conducted over several years with León and her family, peers, and students. An essential document about an extraordinary artist."--Alexandra T. Vazquez, author of Listening in Detail: Performances of Cuban Music