Leila Adu-Gilmore

Dr Adu-Gilmore has composed for Bang on a Can, the London Sinfonietta, the Crossing, the Brentano String Quartet, Mivos String Quartet, So Percussion, Gamelan Padhang Moncar, Orchestra Wellington, as well as performing and having compositions performed at Ojai Music Festival, and Magdalena Opera. She received BMus from Victoria University of Wellington, and her doctorate in music composition at Princeton University, and is currently an assistant professor in the music technology program in the music and performing arts professions department at Steinhardt, New York University. In 2022, Leila Adu–Gilmore was awarded a Charles Ives Composer Fellowship’s from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

As a composer-performer, Leila Adu-Gilmore has firmly carved her name into the space where electropop, avant-classical and singer-songwriter meet. Hailing from New Zealand, Britain and Ghana, Leila has performed her original piano songs and improvisations alongside international artists at festivals and venues in the UK, mainland Europe, the US, Russia, Ghana and Asia. She has released five acclaimed albums, including two for Italian National Radio and ‘Dark Joan’ (recorded by Steve Albini); and has performed on BBC’s World Service solo and produced a short-film and documentary soundtrack with screenings on BBC Knowledge TV channel and the NZ Film Festival, as well as performing in Luscious Jackson on ‘Late Night with David Letterman.’ Leila Adu’s music has been compared to Nina Simone and Joanna Newsome and she has been described by WNYC’s John Schaefer as “a genuinely good singer, with a velvety, soulful voice.” 2019 was big for Leila, as she did everything from being featured in the song “Asylums for the feelings” as heard in the Playstation 4 game Death Stranding, to getting featured on Giles Peterson’s BBC 6 radio show with her band, Lucked In.

As composer-theorist, Adu-Gilmore holds a music composition PhD from Princeton and teaches in the music technology program. Her writing on Ghanaian music, black electronic music and music education had been published in The Music Technology Cookbook (Oxford University Press), as well as journals such as Critical Studies in Improvisation, Continental Thought and Theory, with  articles in the The Journal of Popular Music Education and an upcoming article in Organised Sound Cambridge University Press.

Committed to social change, Adu-Gilmore sat on the board of directors for Die Jim Crow Records the country’s first record label for currently and formerly incarcerated individuals and taught music to incarcerated men at Sing Sing Maximum-Security Correctional Facility as a faculty member of Musicambia – music for social change.

Music: www.leilaadu.com

Research Lab: https://wp.nyu.edu/criticalsonicpracticelab/

Courses Taught

Seminar in Composition: Chamber Ensembles and Electronics

This seminar explores the ins-and-outs of writing for small ensemble and electronics. Students explore each instrument, pertinent repertoire and musical examples; compose a piece for an ensemble-in-residence; premiere works in a concert setting; and have works recorded by the ensemble. Through interactions with the ensemble-in-residence, compositions will be developed in three stages:
early semester brainstorming; mid semester reading; dress rehearsals before the final concert.

Course #: MPATC-GE 2021

Credits: 3

Department: Music and Performing Arts Professions

Advanced Computer Music Composition

Focuses on artistic creation with digital audio, honing both technical and aesthetic skills. Students work through exercises using a variety of platforms, learn to critique and help improve each other’s work, and explore unfamiliar techniques and styles to extend and enrich the idioms of their prior practice. Students analyze landmark compositions from the history of computer music as well as contemporary electronic genres. Course culminates with a public performance of student work.

Course #: MPATE-GE 2047
Credits: 3
Department: Music and Performing Arts Professions

Thesis in Music Technology I

This course serves as the first-semester master’s thesis research and writing class. It covers research methods, testing with human subjects, data analysis, and academic writing. Students are expected to complete the major pre-writing work on their projects by the end of the semester.

Course #: MPATE-GE 2602
Credits: 1
Department: Music and Performing Arts Professions

Global Electronic Music I

This studio course examines a mixtape selection of electronic music from NYC to Capetown to Tokyo using music theory and composition. Global electronic music necessitates diverse methodologies in critical discussion of the research of this music in a post/neo-colonial setting. The class will engage in critical discussion of the studio and the digital audio workstation as compositional tools on the continuum of improvisation, and the music itself as innovation, communication and historiography in global communities of the Information age.

Course #: MPATE-UE 1038

Credits: 3

Department: Music and Performing Arts Professions