Leila Bordreuil is a French American cellist, composer, sound artist, and community organizer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her music accesses concepts from free jazz, contemporary classical, noise music, and other experimental traditions but adheres to no single genre. Driven by a fierce interest in resonance, pure sound, and inherent texture, Leila challenges conventional instrument practice through extreme extended techniques and amplification methods. Her compositions frequently incorporate sound-spatialization by way of site-specific pieces and multichannel installations. Leila’s body of work has grown from and is embedded in New York’s underground music scene. When she is not performing, she is a dedicated community organizer, programmer, producer, and sound engineer in New York’s DIY music scene. Leila’s work has been showcased internationally, including at The Whitney Museum, MoMA PS1, Lincoln Center, The Kitchen, Issue Project Room, Barbican (London), Berlin Atonal, Art Basel (Switzerland), Le Guess Who (Utrecht), Bozar Museum (Brussels) and countless DIY basements across the USA and Europe. Leila received a 2021-2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in music.
At Camargo, Leila will be researching the physics, philosophy, aesthetics, and spirituality of “resonance,” in tandem with her practice of feedback and site-specific composition. She will be working with Marseille-based neuroscientists to study the perception of resonance and investigate the “acoustic archeology” of three medieval Cistercian abbeys in the Provence region.