CONTRIBUTOR:

Leonardo Waisman

AFFILIATION:

TITLE:

Professor

DEPARTMENT:

Facultad de Artes

INSTITUTION:

Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

BIOGRAPHY:

Leonardo Waisman studied composition and musicology at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina) and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he studied with Edward Lowinsky and Howard Mayer Brown. He has published work on a wide range of topics, including the Italian madrigal, performance practice, the popular music of Argentina, and the social significance of musical styles, but his principal focus is colonial music of South America and music in the Jesuit missions in particular. In addition to editing three operas by Vicente Martín y Soler and writing a comprehensive biography of the composer, he recently has published the first comprehensive history of colonial music in Hispanic America (Una historia de la música colonial hispanoamericana [Buenos Aires: Gourmet Musical Ediciones, 2019], see review by Javier Marín López in American Music 2021). Recently retired as Research Fellow at the Argentine National Council for Science and Technology (CONICET), he has held a number of prestigious teaching positions as invited faculty, such as Visiting Simón Bolívar Professor at Cambridge University’s Centre for Latin American Studies (2015–2016), and Tinker Professor at the University of Chicago (Spring 2021). Waisman is also an accomplished harpsichordist and has conducted a number of concerts of previously unperformed Baroque music in Latin America, Europe, and the Far East, as well as recording two CDs for the Melopea label. In 2019, he was the recipient of the Platinum Konex Award from Argentina’s Konex Foundation, which honors lifetime achievements.