Isabel Lepanto Gleicher is a flutist, composer, visual artist, and educator. The New York Times has called her “excellent”, and a “rising talent and stand out performer” by Miller Theatre, where she was a featured Pop-Up Concerts soloist. John Zorn writes “Isabel’s display of virtuosity and her beautiful attitude and stunning musicality inspired me”. Isabel is an artist member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Wild Up, new music sinfonietta Ensemble Echappe, the Annapolis Chamber Music Festival, and hip-hop band ShoutHouse. Isabel is a founding member of Song Sessions Collective, which consists of four improvisers using acoustic and electronic instruments, as well as an LED light installation to perform an ever-changing work based on the structure of whales songs.
Isabel regularly performs with San Francisco based conductorless orchestra One Found Sound, as well as New York City based Talea Ensemble, Argento New Music Ensemble, and Contemporaneous. She also performs at festivals such as Mostly Mozart, Big Ears, Opera Omaha’s One Festival, TIME:SPANS Festival, SONIC MATTER, Sacrum Profanum Festival, MATA, and Prototype Festival. Isabel has appeared on the Guggenheim Museum Works and Process Series, Music of the Americas Society Composer Portrait Series, Park Avenue Armory Martin Creed The Back Door exhibit, the Clark Institute of Art Celebration of Helen Frankenthaler and the American Academy of Arts and Letters annual event An Afternoon of Music and Art. You can hear Isabel featured on several recordings ranging a variety of genres: Wild Up’s latest Grammy nominated album Julius Eastman Vol. 2: Joy Boy, and Julius Eastman Vol. 1: Femenine. As well as composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Aequa, Ilaria Kaila and Aizuri String Quartet album The Bells Bow Down, synth driven post-rock band Infinity Shred’s Shred Offline, and Indie rock band San Fermin’s The Cormorant and Jackrabbit.
Isabel believes that classical music is an open ended canon and focusing on new work is crucial to the continued evolution of the art form. She has had the opportunity to premiere works by Steve Reich, Missy Mazzoli, Du Yun, Dai Fujikura, Jon Batiste, and Augusta Read Thomas, among many others. Isabel has curated solo sets of original music for the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, Experimental Sound Studio, International Contemporary Ensemble’s Tues@7, ChamberQUEERantine Virtual Festival, and George Mason University’s Mason Arts at Home, as well as contributing to Metropolis ensemble's live-streaming perpetual sonic installation Flame Keepers. Isabel is a queer woman who has spent her entire life butting heads with the stereotypes and expectations of a female flute player, both in her appearance and musical aesthetic. She strives to create a home for artists who have been othered by the music community. By commissioning and collaborating with female identifying artists and artists of color as well as celebrating the underrepresented history of POC artists in classical music, she hopes to be a part of changing the expectation of what a classical musician looks like. This representation is the next step in our continued evolution as musicians and members of a larger community.
Active as an educator Isabel has worked with the Bridge Arts Ensemble in the Adirondacks and the American Composers Orchestra at Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton High School. She held a one year position with New York Philharmonic Education as a teaching artist, teaching 3rd grade. Isabel has conducted flute and chamber music master classes, and workshops in experimental music at the Florida International University, Florida State University, University of Kansas, DePauw University, University of Nebraska, SUNY Purchase, University of Massachusetts and at the Texas Flute Festival. She has also collaborated with many composition departments, performing young student composers’ pieces from the Third Street Music School Settlement, Face the Music, Luna Composition Lab, the Music Advancement Program at the Juilliard School and the Very Young Composers program at the New York Philharmonic. Isabel, alongside her colleagues in the International Contemporary Ensemble, is guest faculty at the Walden School Music Camp. Isabel holds an MM in Contemporary Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, an MM from the Yale School of Music, and a BM from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music. Her primary teachers have included Tara Helen O’Connor, Ransom Wilson and Tanya Dusevic Witek.