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Ileana Perez Velazquez is a Cuban-American composer who has been professor of composition at Williams College since 2000. She was born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, and studied undergraduate piano and composition at the Higher Institute of Arts (ISA), Havana, Cuba before moving to the United States for graduate work in composition at Dartmouth College and Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, where she earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree.
Her work draws from a range of influences, which a New York Times review described as an "otherworldly quality mirrored in the accompaniment and sounding like a musical expression of the Latin American literary form magical realism." [1] Her composition Tu, paz mia, performed in 2019, was reviewed as "Processional and solemn, the work is Baroque in tone." [2] She has been commissioned to compose works, including the 2015 Commission from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University. She has written works for performers and ensembles, including Continuum (New York City), Momenta String quartet (New York City), Cassatt Quartet (New York City), Ensemble Dal Niente from Chicago.
Festival performances of her work includes venues such as the Sonidos de las Americas Cuba Festival at Carnegie Hall, by the American Composers Orchestra Chamber Players, and the Composers Now Festival in New York City, but also in Cuba, the United States, throughout South and Central America, Europe, China, and the Middle East.
