Leanna Kirchoff
Biography
A native of rural Colorado, Leanna Kirchoff writes vocal and instrumental chamber music, choral music, musicals and opera. Her music has been performed in concerts at Carnegie Hall, NY; The International Congress of Voice Teachers; the National Opera Association convention, NC; the 9th New London Wind Festival, UK; the Ernest Bloch Festival, OR; the Chamber Music Conference, VT; Stages Theatre Company, MN; and the American Choral Directors Association conference, MO.
Kirchoff’s career has been highlighted with awards for her choral music and staged works. Her chamber opera, The Clever Artifice of Harriet and Margaret won the 2014-2016 National Opera Association chamber opera competition. The opera was performed at the 2016 NOA convention by Indiana Wesleyan University opera department. Clever Artifice has also been performed at Missouri State University, the Minnesota Fringe Festival, the University of Colorado, and by Gateway Opera in St. Louis.
Kirchoff, in collaboration with librettist Rachel J. Peters, has been awarded Opera America’s Discovery Grant in 2018 for the development of Friday After Friday, a chamber opera dramatizing violence and poverty in present-day war-torn Syria.
Kirchoff received the Sorel Medallion, an international choral composition prize for her choral piece, Meciendo. The award culminated in a performance at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall by New York-based Voices of Ascension. Kirchoff has also held an American Composers Forum Faith Partners Residency, composing choral pieces for Boston area Temple Emanuel Synagogue and Twelfth Baptist Church.
Expanding upon her work as a composer, Kirchoff has created visuals for A Recurrent Dream While Driving West Near Sand Creek, a recent audio-visual piece with composer Chris Malloy on the topic of the Sand Creek Massacre. The piece has been showcased at the International Computer Music Conference in Daegu, South Korea, the International Congress of Science and Music Technology in Buenos Aires, Argentina and the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center (Pueblo, Colorado) in spring 2018 for the exhibition, “Representing the West: A New Frontier.”
Kirchoff holds a doctorate degree in composition from the University of Colorado. She has been a composition fellow at the John Duffy Institute, the Ernest Bloch Festival, the Rural America New Music Festival, and the Chamber Music Conference and Composers Forum of the East. She is a faculty member at the University of Denver where she teaches composition seminar and directs the Lamont Composers Concert series.