A musician's search for a Peruvian muse.

• Author: Crane, Janet
• Position: MUSIC - Gabriela Lena Frank - Interview

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Composer and pianist Gabriela Lena Frank says that at heart she's a homebody and that she loves living in her hometown of Berkeley, California. "I'm not nomadic in the United States. I love my routine," she asserts. A look at her schedule and accomplishments suggests that she's also at home in the world and constantly on the go: as a composer-in-residence with symphonies, giving talks and master classes at colleges and festivals, collaborating with other musicians, giving piano recitals, and going to Peru at least once a year with her Peruvian mother.

At age 37, Gabriela is enjoying national and, increasingly, international recognition. She won a 2009 Latin Grammy for Inca Dances , a composition for guitar and string quartet that was recorded by Manuel Barrueco and the Cuarteto Latinoamericano. She was a 2009 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for work with Cuban-born playwright Nilo Cruz on an opera about Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. In October she was named Creative Advisor to the adventurous Berkeley Symphony and its newly appointed music director, Joana Carueiro.

I sat down with Gabriela in a Berkeley café that she frequents the day after the Berkeley Symphony gave the West Coast premiere of Peregrinos , a five movement work for orchestra composed during a recent two-year residency with the Indianapolis Symphony. There, Gabriela spent many hours with the city's growing Latino community, listening to the varied experiences of recent immigrants. Peregrinos expresses musically the often difficult and sad stories of their persistence and hope in the face of hardship.

Gabriela's parents met when her father was in coastal Peru as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s. She credits his Side of the family, which hails from New York, for her musical genes; perfect pitch runs in the family. "When I was a child my mother took me to La Peña (a Latino cultural center in Berkeley) where South American folk groups performed. At home, my parents played LPs of Peruvian folk music, but I also grew up listening to Leonard Bernstein." From an early age, Gabriela could play on the piano all the songs she heard at performances. She studied piano throughout her childhood, mastering the European canon, and today is an accomplished concert pianist.

Gabriela studied music at Rice University in Texas, and it was there that she began to delve into her Latin American cultural legacy. She also became active in Latino student groups...