Leslie Uyeda
Leslie Uyeda is a composer, conductor and pianist living in Vancouver, Canada. She composes for voice, piano, choirs, solo instruments and ensembles, including two operas: When the Sun Comes Out (2013), and Silence (world premiere June 2025).
Latest News
New album released on July 26: The Sex Lives of Vegetables
The provocatively titled The Sex Lives of Vegetables: Music of Leslie Uyeda is the first solo recording for revered Vancouver-based composer, conductor and pianist Leslie Uyeda, and it showcases her deep affinity for the human voice. Uyeda has worked extensively with the celebrated Canadian poet and author Lorna Crozier, and has composed over sixty songs with Crozier’s gorgeous and dramatic poetry. This new CD includes The First Woman, a song cycle of four songs for soprano and piano, with poems chosen from The Apocrypha of Light, and the three volumes of The Sex Lives of Vegetables, using fifteen poems from The Garden Going On Without Us. Included on the album is one of Uyeda’s recent works for solo piano - Hahawo Shinobite 母を偲びて (I Cherish and Honour my Mother). The featured performers are all renowned interpreters of contemporary music — soprano Heather Pawsey, pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, and clarinettist AK Coope.
Listen to an interview about the CD from CBC’s Saskatchewan Weekend with Shauna Powers here.
“This is the first full-length album to feature Leslie Uyeda’s music, apparently. We want more.”
“a striking and quirky pair of song cycles”