Cesar Leal
Conductor, Musicologist, Teacher
Colombian born conductor and musicologist César Leal is currently the Director of Orchestral Activities and Coordinator of Musicology at Gettysburg College, where he conducts the Sunderman Conservatory Symphony and teaches musicology courses. Prior to his current position at Gettysburg College, Leal served as the artistic director and conductor of the Sewanee Symphony Orchestra in Sewanee, TN, where he belonged to both the faculty and the artistic advisory committee of the Sewanee Summer Music Festival. He has led ensembles in academic and professional settings across the U.S., Panama, Colombia, France, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and the Ukraine. Leal holds a PhD in Musicology from the University of Kentucky and a Masters degree in Instrumental Conducting from Florida International University, where he studied conducting with Maestro Stewart Robertson.
Leal’s interest in interdisciplinarity and collaboration inform his scholarly and artistic projects and reflect his passion for teaching as well as his love for performing and researching. Leal’s research interests include music and culture during fin-de-siècle Paris, Franco-American artistic interactions, soundscapes, Jewish patronage and modernism, Latin American cultural identities in the U.S., and race, class, and gender relations in music. He received the prestigious Kennedy Fellowship, which supported his scholarly and creative projects between 2017-2019.
His musicological output involves scholarly (peer-reviewed) publications as well as interdisciplinary creative projects. He has presented scholarly papers in the U.S., Canada, Greece, Japan, Italy, France, England, Peru, Colombia, and Switzerland. In 2018, Leal was invited by Musikproduktion Hoeflich to join the project Repertoire Explorer Series, for which he produces introductory essays for new editions of works by Parisian composers of fin-de-siècle Paris such as Camille Saint-Saëns, Gabriel Pierné, and Camille Chevillard.
In 2018, Leal collaborated with Greg Pond (visual artist), Banning Bouldin (choreographer), Jessica Usherwood (soprano), and Charles Stehno (computer programmer) in the interdisciplinary project Guncotton, which received the 2018 ArtPrize award.
His scholarly contributions include “Écouter le Scandale et la Transgression: Les Modèles Révisionnistes de l’Histriographie Musicale Basés sur l’Étude Du Paysage Sonore” (Nîmes: Lucie Éditions, 2015), “Sponsoring and Constructing Modernism: Jewish Patronage, Entrepreneurs, and Cultural Mediation in Paris during Fin-de-siècle” (Bologna: Ut Orpheus Edizioni, 2020), and “Music Publications: Artifacts and Instruments of the Music Industry” (Belgium: Brepol, 2022). His most recent book project, a collaboration with Musicologist Diana Hallman, America in the French Imaginary 1789-1914: Music Revolution and Race (Boydell & Brewer, 2022), was awarded the publication subvention award of the American Musicological Society.
Leal’s conducting activities also reflect his own research interests. In 2012, he founded the Ensemble of Variable Geometry (EnVaGe), an ensemble of soloists which specializes in re-centering the musical experience around the individualities of the listener. EnVaGe not only proposes new ways to represent the canon (e.g., reflections on current socio-cultural issues) but also brings new and unrepresented voices (composers, performers, and artists) to the forefront of musical re-creation. As a powerful pedagogical tool, this performative, interdisciplinary, and scholarly research project facilitates collaborative relationships between different musical styles and genres. During its eleven years, EnVaGe has become an important component of Leal’s activities as an artist and scholar and has led him to perform in several venues in the U.S. and publish in various journals of international scope.
The program for his debut with the Panama National Symphony Orchestra in July 2014 featured works from the fin-de-siècle (1880-1913) that bridged European and Latin American musical traditions. He returned to Panama during the summers of 2019 and 2023, this time, as director the Alfredo de Saint-Malo International Music Festival and the National Symphony Orchestra. His programs included Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique, Gavilan’s Guaguancó, and Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto (Eric Silberger, violin).
An advocate of young artists, Leal often teaches conducting workshops and acts as a guest conductor and clinician with youth orchestras in the U.S. and abroad. Since 2015, he has been teaching the conducting masterclass at the KIIS summer program in Salzburg. He has conducted several district and regional orchestras for ILMEA (Illinois Music Education Association), PMEA (Pennsylvania Music Education Association), and the BCPS (Baltimore County Public Schools.. As an adjudicator, Leal is often invited to be part of important national and regional competitions such as the Midwest Young Artists concerto competition (Chicago, IL), Texas State University (Jacqueline Avent concerto competition (Sewanee Summer Music Festival), as well as the CSO youth orchestras (Chattanooga, TN) and the Tennessee Tech University (Cookeville, TN) concerto competitions.
