Alejandro L. Madrid, Professor and Chair at Cornell's Department of Music, has recently published his book Tania León's Stride. A Polyrhythmic Life as part of the University of Illinois Press' Music in American Life series. In this book, Madrid draws on oral history, archival work, and ethnography to offer the first in-depth biography of composer, conductor, and arts advocate Tania León. Breaking from a chronological account, Madrid looks at León through the issues that have informed and defined moments in her life and her professional works, be it the Cuban revolution, the Cold War, or the struggle for civil and individual rights. Thus, the book is a story of how a human being reacts to the challenges thrown at her by history itself. Nuanced and multifaceted, Tania León’s Stride looks at the life, legacy, and milieu that created and sustained one of today's most important figures in American classical music.
