Tania León (born May 14, 1943) is a Cuban-born American composer of both large scale and chamber works. She is also renowned as a conductor, educator, and advisor to arts organizations. Early years and education She was born Tania Justina León in Havana, Cuba, of mixed French, Spanish, Chinese, African, and Cuban heritage. It was her grandmother who recognized that her granddaughter liked music because of the way she reacted to music on the radio. She began studying the piano at the age of four and she attended Carlos Alfredo Peyrellade Conservatory, where she earned a B.A. in 1963, and the Alejandro García Caturla Conservatory, where she studied piano with Zenaida Manfugás. Leon was one of an estimated 300,000 Cubans who left Cuba as a refugee on the so-called "Freedom Flights". In the spring of 1967 she left Cuba and settled in New York City, continuing her studies at New York University under the tutelage of Ursula Mamlok (B.S., 1971; M.S., 1975). Career In 1969 León became a founding member and the first musical director of Arthur Mitchell's Dance Theater of Harlem, establishing its music department, music school, and orchestra. Her ballet compositions for that company include Haiku (1973), Dougla (with Geoffrey Holder, 1974) and Belé (with Geoffrey Holder; 1981). She instituted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert Series in 1978 and in 1994 co-founded the American Composers Orchestra Sonidos de las Americas Festivals as Latin American Music Advisor. From 1993 to 1997, she was New Music Advisor to Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic. She also served as Latin American Music Advisor to the American Composers Orchestra until 2001. In March 2001 her orchestral work Desde... was premiered by the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. She has been a guest conductor with the Beethovenhalle Orchestra, Bonn; the Gewandhausorchester, Leipzig; the Santa Cecilia Orchestra, Rome; the National Symphony Orchestra of South Africa, Johannesburg; the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, the Netherlands; and the New York Philharmonic, among others. León's opera Scourge of Hyacinths, based on a radio play by Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka, was commissioned in 1994 by the Munich Biennale, where it won the BMW Prize as best new opera. Staged and designed by Robert Wilson with León conducting, it has received over 22 performances in Germany, Switzerland, France and Mexico. The aria "Oh Yemanja" from Scourge was recorded by Dawn Upshaw on her Nonesuch CD The World So Wide.