Ex’pression College | All Access » Faculty focus: Cheryl Leonard

Faculty focus: Cheryl Leonard

Posted on February 17, 2010 under Faculty, Sound Arts

Last January, Cheryl Leonard, Ex’pression College Lab Instructor for Studio Maintenance, traveled to Antarctica to create music and make field recordings of the natural sounds there. She visited Palmer Station on an Antarctic Artists and Writers grant from the National Science Foundation. During her month on the ice, Cheryl explored the local islands and glaciers, searching out and recording natural soundscapes. The Antarctic Peninsula in the austral summer is full of wildlife, icebergs, melting glaciers, and fascinating sounds. Cheryl wrote a fascinating blog about her experiences working with audio in Antarctica titled: Music from The Ice.

Cheryl gave a presentation about her Antarctic work at Bay Area Sound Ecology BASEbot 005, a listening salon, on Sunday, February 21, 2010. Location:

Dan Dugan Sound Design
290 Napoleon Street Studio E
San Francisco, CA 94124

Cheryl E. Leonard is a composer, performer, improviser, and instrument builder. Much of her work focuses on exploring sounds, structures, and materials from the natural world. Glass shards and pinecones, glaciers, boxspring mattresses, a flock of accordions, circular saw blades, viola, the erhu, hyenas, whales and elk… Cheryl’s music finds its raw materials just about anywhere. From these diverse sources come works that embrace the spectrum of musical possibilities: improvised to composed, acoustic to electronic, diaphanous to bombastic, notes to noise. Many of Leonard’s works explore subtle textures and intricacies in sounds not generally considered musical. These investigations often include the creation of instruments, primarily from found natural materials.