Kendra Preston Leonard
Kendra Preston Leonard is a musicologist specializing in women in music and music and screen history in 20th century France, Britain, and America. She studied as a cellist at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, The Peabody Conservatory, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the University of Miami before studying musicology at the University of Cincinnati. She received her PhD from the University of Sunderland.
She won the inaugural Judith Tick Fellowship from the Society for American Music for research on Louise Talma and held the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library’s Thornton Wilder Fellowship from Yale University. She taught musicology at Westminster Choir College from 2009-2011 and is a frequent speaker and workshop leader at colleges and universities. She is the Executive Director of the Silent Film Sound and Music Archive. Librettist of Marie Curie Learns to Swim, a one act opera with music by Jessica Rudman.
Publications: Books: Louise Talma: A Life in Composition, Ashgate Publishing, 2014; Shakespeare, Madness and Music: Scoring Insanity in Cinematic Adaptations, Scarecrow Press, 2009; The Conservatoire Américain: a History, Scarecrow Press, 2007.
Edited Collections: Contributing editor, Buffy, Ballads, and Bad Guys Who Sing: Music in the Worlds of Joss Whedon, Scarecrow Press, 2010.
Numerous book chapters, articles, conference presentations, and reviews.
