Kendra Preston Leonard

words for and about music

I'm a scholar focusing on music and screen history and women and music; and a poet, playwright, lyricist, and librettist.

On April 23, hear my bubbly and fun choral work with composer Jena Root, “Past the Moon,” premiered by the Good Company Vocal Ensemble on their Lost in the Stars concert.

My poems “Jessica Lights the Candles” and “Revolution Sounds” will appear in Empyrean Magazine 5.

My short story “The Call Stop” will be published in Potter’s Field 8 by Hiraeth Publishing in the autumn. It’s a ghost story in the classic English Christmas tradition.

Currently in the works: new environmentally-themed pieces with composer Jessi Harvey and visual artist Rachel Watson for a work called Between Hope and Extinction.

“Reparations in Music Scholarship,” American Music 40, no. 4 (August 2022).

“Hearing The Hands of Orlac,” A Teaching Companion to Silent Film, eds. Liz Clarke and Martin Johnson, Rutgers University Press.

“Women’s Compiled Scores in Early Film Music,” Hidden Harmonies: Women and Music in Popular Entertainment, co-edited with Paula Bishop, forthcoming from the University Press of Mississippi, 2023.

“Women and Technology in Music for the Silent Cinema,” in Player Pianos in Early 20th-Century Life, ed. Catherine Hennessy Wolter, 2023.