Veronica Frantz Leahy

Biography

Veronica Leahy is a multi-woodwind player, pianist, composer, and music director recently graduated from Harvard. She has composed for the iconic Hasty Pudding Theatricals for the past two years, and in December 2022, her original musical "Queen of Magic" was performed in the Loeb Experimental Theater. She was also named an emerging composer by the Tribeca New Music Festival. She served as the music director for the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players and a music assistant at the American Repertory Theater. She is the recipient of the Radcliffe Doris Cohen Levi Prize. Veronica also produced and artistic directed the first-ever Harvard Composers Festival, bringing together student and world-renowned composers alike to share and discuss their original pieces.

As a saxophonist, she has appeared at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, the Ravinia Music Festival, the Monterey Jazz Festival, Scullers Jazz Club, with Terri Lyne Carrington and the Berklee Jazz and Gender Justice Institute, and more. She has a composition featured in the New Standards book, which amplifies the work of 101 female jazz composers, and she appeared as a bass clarinetist on the GRAMMY-award winning album.

In high school, she received national recognition in both classical and jazz saxophone through her selection in ensembles such as the 2018 Grammy Jazz Band, the 2018 National YoungArts Foundation jazz combo, and the 2017 and 2018 Honor Band of America. Notable performances include appearances on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.