Educator and Author
Brenda Leach is a passionate advocate for music and arts education at all levels. She is a frequent adjudicator and clinician for orchestra festivals, assessments, and music competitions, particularly in the northeast and mid-Atlantic regions. She also is a regular guest conductor for orchestra festivals.
A dedicated educator, she has taught a variety of topics in music with a particular focus on conducting and keyboard studies. She has given conducting and organ masterclasses at a wide variety of venues including the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music, Russia where she focused on orchestral works of American composers -- Bernstein, Barber, Beach, and Gershwin. As a music professor, she has served on the faculties at Harvard University and Haverford College, and has taught an array of courses including conducting, applied organ and keyboard studies, music history, form and analysis, music theory, as well as special topics in music and the arts.
She has a particular interest in interdisciplinary studies connecting music to other art forms. This is reflected in her book Looking and Listening: Conversations between Modern Music and Art which is published by Rowman and Littlefield. She presents innovative lectures, adult education courses and museum materials around this topic.