Flutist and music creator ISABEL LEPANTO GLEICHER is a soloist, chamber musician and educator. Enjoying an international career, Isabel performs throughout Europe, China, Japan, Canada and the United States. The New York Times has called her “excellent” and John Zorn writes “Isabel’s display of virtuosity and her beautiful attitude and stunning musicality inspired me”. Isabel is an artist member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICEensemble), new music sinfonietta Ensemble Echappe, the Annapolis Chamber Music Festival, and hip-hop band ShoutHouse. She is a founding member of woodwind quintet SoundMind. Her project Song Sessions, alongside clarinetist Eric Umble, and composer Barry Sharp received a 2019 New Music USA grant. Isabel performs with ensembles such as wild Up, Talea Ensemble, the Argento New Music Project, Contemporaneous, Imani Winds and Friends of MATA Ensemble. As part of these and other groups, Isabel has had the opportunity to premiere works by Steve Reich, Missy Mazzoli, John Zorn, Beat Furrer, Augusta Read Thomas, and Dai Fujikura among others. She also performs at festivals such as Mostly Mozart, Big Ears, Opera Omaha’s One Festival, Sacrum Profanum Festival, MATA, Prototype Festival, Resonant Bodies, New Haven Arts and Ideas, Lake George Summer Music Festival and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Isabel has appeared on the Guggenheim Museum Works and Process Series, Music of the Americas Society Composer Portrait Series, Park Avenue Armory Martin Creed The Back Door exhibit, the Clark Institute of Art Celebration of Helen Frankenthaler and the American Academy of Arts and Letters annual event An Afternoon of Music and Art. 

As a soloist, Isabel has been called a “rising talent and stand out performer in the new music scene” by Miller Theatre. She was featured in a solo recital on Miller Theatre’s Pop Up series. Isabel has also collaborated with So Percussion on a performance of Lou Harrison’s Flute Concerto at the Kennedy Center and with the Aizuri Quartet on a portrait recording of music by composer Ilari Kaila.  Isabel won first prize at the Myrna Brown Young Artist Competition at the Texas Flute Festival in 2015 as well as placing second prize at both the South Carolina and Kentucky Flute Festival Young Artist Competitions in 2012. You can hear Isabel featured on several recordings ranging a variety of genres: composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Aequa, Augusta Read Thomas The Auditions, Missy Mazzoli’s Proving Up original cast album, Indie rock band San Fermin’s The Cormorant and Jackrabbit, and hip-hop band ShoutHouse’s CityScapes. In 2020 while in quarantine, Isabel presented a solo recital on the Recital Stream platform, as well as a solo set on ChamberQUEERantine’s virtual festival that featured projections by Paige Seber. She also curated a show for ICEensemble’s Tues@7 online showcase series. Isabel was joined by composer/drummer Jessie Cox, and revolutionary freedom artist Spiritchild for a show that culminated in a premiere of a new work by Isabel called Orchestrated Thoughts that was developed in an exquisite corpse style, layering improvisations, sounds, and abstract views of the outside world. Isabel premiered a new work called Enigmatic on George Mason University’s series Mason Arts at Home. This piece was commissioned by Sam Nester and inspired by Nester’s installation at George Mason University Arcadia.

Active as a teaching artist Isabel has worked with the Bridge Arts Ensemble in the Adirondacks  and the American Composers Orchestra at Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton High School. She held a one year position with New York Philharmonic Education as a teaching artist apprentice, teaching 3rd grade. Isabel has conducted flute and chamber music master classes, and workshops in experimental music at the University of Nebraska, SUNY Purchase, DePauw University, University of Massachusetts and at the Texas Flute Festival. She has also collaborated with many composition departments, performing young student composers’ pieces from the Third Street Music School Settlement, Face the Music, Luna Composition Lab, the Music Advancement Program at the Juilliard School and the Very Young Composers program at the New York Philharmonic. Isabel, alongside her colleagues in ICE, is guest faculty at the Walden School Music Camp. Isabel holds an MM in Contemporary Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, an MM from the Yale School of Music, and a BM from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music. Her primary teachers have included Tara Helen O’Connor, Ransom Wilson and Tanya Dusevic Witek. 

Isabel believes that classical music is an open ended canon and the commissioning of new work is crucial to the continued evolution of the art form. Isabel is a queer woman who has spent her entire life butting heads with the stereotypes and expectations of a female flute player, both in her appearance and musical aesthetic. She strives to create a home for artists who have been othered by the music community. By commissioning and collaborating with  female identifying artists and artists of color as well as celebrating the underrepresented history of POC artists in classical music, she hopes to be a part of changing the expectation of what a classical musician looks like. This representation is the next step in our continued evolution as musicians and members of a larger community.