Kendra Preston Leonard Interview
Dr. Kendra Preston Leonard is the founder and executive director of the Silent Film Sound and Music Archive. She describes herself as a “scholar focusing on music and screen history and women and music; and a poet, playwright, lyricist, and librettist.”
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I began my career as a cellist. I went to the North Carolina Governor’s School program in high school, and everything we performed was new—or new-ish: Penderecki, Lutoslawski, Adams, Berio—and I became really interested in new music. Right after that, I became a boarding high school student at The University of North Carolina School of Arts (UNCSA), which was a great experience and where I was able to really dig into music that was new to me, and where I was able to keep learning about new music, broadly construed.
I decided that I’d focus on new music in my career. I got my Bachelor of Music in cello at Peabody, spent a year in London doing a post-grad certificate at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, then came back to the US and did my MM at the University of Miami, where I had outstanding music history teachers. All during this time, I was having issue with pain while playing. I had hoped my year at Guildhall, where I focused intensely on technique, would help, and while my technique did get much better, the pain didn’t.