Isabel Lepanto Gleicher is a flutist, improviser, 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”. Izzy 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. Through composed, stream of consciousness structured improvisations with the use of graphic and text notation make up the elements of Isabel’s original work. This work exists in the intersection of her musical and visual artistic practices. Isabel has curated solo sets of original music for the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, Experimental Sound Studio, 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 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 is the flute faculty at SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music, her alma mater where she received a BM in Flute Performance. She has also earned an MM in Contemporary Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, and an MM from the Yale School of Music.
In the summer of 2023 Isabel (Izzy) competed on season 25 of the CBS reality TV show Big Brother. She was evicted in an 8-1 vote on day 44 wearing a pig costume. To check out more about all of Izzy’s body of work, check out her website: www.izzymakesart.com