Leonardo Heiblum

Leonardo Heiblum
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Born	December 8, 1970
Nationality	Mexican
Citizenship	Mexico
Occupation	Composer Producer Instrumentalist

Leonardo Heiblum Radosh (Mexico City, December 8, 1970) is a Mexican composer, producer and instrumentalist, known for his work mixing classical and indigenous instruments as well as his work creating music with his own recordings of the environment. As a Film Composer, he has received several awards, including 3 premios Ariel for: Desierto adentro (2008); Carriere 250 Mts (2011); La jaula de oro (2013); and two Premios Fénix for: Tempestad (2016) and Pájaros de verano (2018).

Early Life

Leo is the youngest brother of a Jewish atheist family in Mexico City. His mother, Raquel Radosh Corkidi was a prominent psychoanalyst; His father, Israel Heiblum Shapiro, was a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst. Since he was born, music was an important part of his household. At the age of 5 he started piano lessons with Clara Katz, a piano teacher from Austria who taught him until the age of 10. During his teen years he approached other instruments like guitar, saxophone, flute and drums.

His Great-grandmother Lea Acriche, was born in Palestine and came to México in the early 20's. She played the pots and pans in the family gatherings, leaving a music tradition in Leo's house that was very important for the musical concepts he would develop later. Also his mother, Raquel, played the piano with his aunt Silvia, and his brother and sister played guitar and sang Latin American folklore and Brazilian songs. Music was present since Leo's childhood and it never stopped playing.

When he was 17 years old, he entered the CIEM (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Musicales) to study composition. He presented successfully the highest grade of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) and finished the program but did not graduate for some misunderstandings with the school's administration. During his last period in the school he started to play Salsa music with the band Amor en cualquier esquina together with his teacher Ernesto (Neto) García this was the experience that led to his departure from school. When he was 20, he moves to Oaxaca City for a season, to play in the legendary Bar Candela. After this first experience as a real life musician, he travels to Guatemala where he comes into contact with Afro-American rhythms in the east coast of the country. At 22 years old, Leo goes to Orlando, Florida to study recording engineering at Full Sail Center for the Recording Arts graduating Valedictorian of his class.

Beginning of his career

After graduating as a sound engineer in 1993, he gets an Internship at "The Looking Glass Studios", Philip Glass's studio in Manhattan. On his way to New York City, he stops and spends some days in Wisconsin, where Santa Sabina (band) was recording their second album with the producer Adrian Belew since then he has collaborated many times with Poncho Figueroa. In 1993 he arrives at the Lower East Side to work at The Looking Glass as an assistant to Michael Riesman. Although his first work in the studio was recording the Blue Man Group he spent most of his time at Philip Glass's studio, working on the pre-production of the Opera La Belle et la Bête (opera) as a musical assistant to Michael Riesman. From 1994 to 1998, he was part of all the Philip Glass Ensemble tours made with this opera in Europe, Japan, USA and Mexico. During this experience he becomes friends with all the PGE, Philip and his son Wolfe Glass.

In 1997 he moves to Buenos Aires for one year, where he studies Latin-American music at the Instituto Municipal De Folklore Y Artesanías Argentinas De Avellaneda. During this time he was in a street theater group called Mímesis where he developed the EMDI (Experiencias modélicas disparadoras) short theater pieces to be played in schools and open spaces designed to grow awareness for all the different kinds of pollution that surrounds us. After one year in Buenos Aires and with the invitation from Philip Glass, he decides to travel to India for the first time. In this first trip he consolidated his Yoga practice and spent 9 months in the subcontinent, 4 of them in Dharamkot, Himachal Pradesh, a village a few miles from Dharamshala where he met Ashoka Rehela, his tabla Guru with whom he has been studying tabla for 23 years.

Music for film

His career as a composer for film starts very early in the 90's, when he and Jacobo Lieberman started working with young film makers who where film students at the time and who still continue to make films and collaborate with Leonardo and Jacobo, this film makers include Tatiana Huezo, Rodrigo Plá, Lucía Gajá and Juan Carlos Rulfo.

In 2001 the movie Frida is shot in México. Leo works in this film as a music producer and music supervisor together with Jacobo Lieberman. He also works as personal assistant to the director Julie Taymor. It’s here where he starts to introduce Son Jarocho in the films where he works, collaborating with the Son Jarocho bands Los Vega and Los Cojolites.

The collaboration between Los Vega and Leo has continued to develop since and Los Vega, as well as other traditional musicians like Joel Cruz Castellanos from Los Cojolites have participated in the scores of many films and other multidisciplinary projects where Leo composed the music.

In 2013 Jacobo and Leo wrote the music for Gael García Bernal and Marc Silver's film Who is Dayani Cristal?, where together with Los Vega they reinterpreted in the Son Jarocho style The Partisan which is a song from the French resistance created in 1942, with lyrics by Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie and music by Anna Marly. This song has been made popular by many covers, specially the one by Leonard Cohen "The Partisan".

This Son Jarocho version was also performed by Leo with Los Vega at the Vive Latino music festival and at the ASCAP Latin Awards in 2013 and in 2017 at Jeremy Scahill's podcast Intercepted with Jeremy Scahill together with the Tibetan musician Tenzin Choegyal..

Although the body of work Leo has produced in film is very large, placing him as one of the main composers of music for film in Mexico, he has also worked in other disciplines such as theater, dance and different large events. He was the music director for the closing ceremonies for the FICCO a film festival in México City that started a new era for film in México. In the Ibero-American Film Fenix Awards, he was the music director for all the five ceremonies. He wrote music for the opening of the Central American and Caribbean Games in Veracruz in 2013 winning a Telly Award. He designed the music for the ceremony for the C40 Cities Bloomberg Philanthropy Awards in 2017.

Teaching

Leo has been sharing his experience giving workshops and talks about music for film since many years. This all started when he was the artistic director for the Laboratories of music, film and creation, in collaboration with Bertha Navarro. For seven years they invited ten young composers from Latin-America to spend two weeks composing first with the same movie and director and then divided into pairs with ten different directors working on their films. All the time overseen and nourished by experienced advisors who also gave talks and master classes. These advisors included famous film composers such as Antônio Pinto (composer), Andrés Sánchez, Leoncio Lara, Eduardo Gamboa, Gus Reyes, George S. Clinton, Michael Nyman, Arturo Rodriguez, Sarah Polley, Richard Bellis and Peter Golub who runs the Sundance Institute Film Music Program and was essential in inspiring and helping Bertha and Leo develop this Lab.

Recording Engineering

After his experience with Philip and his travels in India, he returns to México in 1999 and starts working at the THX mixing room in the Estudios Churubusco with Jaime Baksht. There he mixed the sound for more than 50 films. However soon enough his career as a composer would take over his career as a mixer and with his cousin Jacobo Lieberman he opens Audioflot , a recording and music producing studio in the Mexico City neighborhood of San Miguel Chapultepec. In this studio he created the music for all his projects. In 2020 the project Audioflot together with Jacobo Lieberman closes its door, to give place to Leo's new label Belurecords in the same space. With this label, Leo has produced and published many albums. He has focused on Son Jarocho, publishing albums by Los Vega, their family and other traditional musicians, aiming to preserve and support this music, musicians and their communities

Composer, producer and instrumentalist

Leo plays many instruments, which makes him an eclectic and versatile musician, mainly the jarana, tabla and piano. For composing he always used the piano, but now he is writing more often on the jarana and the guitarra media, a melodic instrument from the traditional Son Jarocho from Veracruz.

Beyond the music he composes using traditional musical instruments, Leo has a project he has been working on all his life. The music from the "Encyclopedia Sónica", music he creates using the sounds and rhythms of life. His concept consists on recording the sounds of the world, without deliberately creating them and writing songs using those sounds. Leo has been traveling with a recording device around the world for 25 years, registering all the sounds that might be part of his compositions. His recordings range from elephants walking in India, the Perito Moreno Glacier melting, monkeys and other sounds from the Lacandona jungle, oceans from many parts of the world, electric stairs from the subways and other urban sounds from NY, London, Oslo, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Tokyo, Delhi, México and many other cities and villages.

In 2006 he wrote the music for Juan Carlos Rulfo's film En el hoyo, using only sounds produced by the building of the second story of the Periférico Highway in Mexico City.

In 2016, Leo receives the SNCA (Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte) a grant which allows him to develop the first three volumes of the Encyclopedia Sónica and give a series of live performances with collaborations from different musicians and film makers including Joshua Marston and Juan Carlos Rulfo.

Collaborations with Philip Glass

In 2012 Philip Glass made a concert in Real de Catorce to record an album with two @Wixarika@ musicians called The Concert of the Sixth Sun where he invited Leo to work as an engineer and producer.

In 2017 they recorded a second album The Spirit of the Earth with Philip Glass, Daniel Medina de la Rosa and Erasmo Medina Medina at Belurecords (then Audioflot) and presented this album at Bellas Artes and Le Poisson Rouge in 2018.

He has also been collaborating with Wolfe Glass mixing and producing 19 original songs by Wolfe that are being released since 2020.

With Philip he also produced and played tabla and jarana in 2018 in the album Introducing the Suso & Glass Quartet where Philip plays piano, the great master Foday Musa Suso from Gambia plays the Kora, and Asher Delerme plays percussion.

Collaboration with Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith

While Leo was recording the album "Spirit of The Earth" in 2017 the members from Soundwalk Collective: Stephan Crasneanscki, Simone Merli y Paul Hance visited the studio and invited Leo to work on a project about Antonin Artaud and the time he spent in Chihuahua with the Rarámuris Indians. The American singer and poet Patti Smith was part of this project. Since then, Leo has done 2 more albums with Patti Smith and Soundwalk Collective. For the first album, they also invited Nicolas Becker, famous French sound composer and designer, winner of the Academy Award for the sound of the film Sound of Metal. Together with him, they composed the music for The Peyote Dance, with poems by Artaud, interpreted by Patti Smith as well as poems written by her. For this project they used recordings made by Soundwalk Collective in the caves where Artaud lived in Chihuahua. Traditional Rarámuri musicians Martín and Clorinda Makawi also participated, as well as the Jarocho musician Joel Cruz Castellanos from Los Cojolites and Jacobo Lieberman.

After this, Soundwalk Collective invited Leo to collaborate with them in "Mummer Love", the next album with Patti Smith. This was inspired by the life and work of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. For this project, Soundwalk Collective recorded a Sufi choir and made sound field recordings in the house where Rimbaud lived in Ethiopia. Leo invited Philip Glass to record Wurlitzer and piano in three cuts of the album, and this was the first recording between Patti Smith and Philip Glass, after a long history of live collaborations.

Finally, for the last of the trilogy, Leo collaborated in the album Peradam, inspired by the work of René Daumal and his Mount Analogue. For this collaboration they invited Anoushka Shankar and Tenzin Choegyal.

This trilogy in which Leo participates as composer and music producer, was mixed by @Russell Elevado@, supported by the Analogue Foundation and published by the record label Bella Union.

Awards

Premio a la mejor música Asociación Mexicana de Críticos de Teatro 2002 with Jacobo Lieberman - La noche que raptaron a Epifania (Dir. Ana Francis Mor)

51 Ariel Awards 2009 - Winner Original Music with Jacobo Lieberman - Desierto Adentro (Dir. Rodrigo Plá)

5to Atlantidoc Festival Internacional De Cine Documental De Uruguay - Winner Original Music with Jacobo Lieberman - The Tiniest Place (Dir. Tatiana Huezo)

Festival Internacional De Cine De Costa Rica 2012 - Winner Original Music Documentary with Jacobo Lieberman - Carriere (Dir. Juan Carlos Rulfo)

Festival Internacional De Cine De Costa Rica 2012 - Winner Original Music Fiction with Jacobo Lieberman - La Demora (Dir. Rodrigo Plá)

34 Festival De Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano De La Habana 2012 - Coral Award for Original Music with Jacobo Lieberman - La Demora (Dir. Rodrigo Plá)

55 Ariel Awards 2013 - Winner Original Music with Jacobo Lieberman - Carriere 250 Mts (Dir. Juan Carlos Rulfo)

GSCA Achievemnt Awards 2013 - Best Original Score with Jacobo Lieberman - Flight Of The Butterflies (Dir. Mike Slee)

56 Ariel Awards 2014 - Winner Original Music with Jacobo Lieberman - La Jaula De Oro (Dir. Diego Quemada-Diez)

Telly Award Use of Music Award - 2014 - CACG (Central American and Caribbean Games) Opening Ceremony 2013

Fénix Awards 2016 - Winner Original Music with Jacobo Lieberman – Tempest (Dir. Tatiana Huezo)

Fénix Awards 2018 - Winner Original Music - Birds of Passage (Dir. Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallegos)

Cannes 2021 Prix de la Meullieure Création Sonore - Prayers For The Stolen (Dir. Tatiana Huezo, Sound Design Lena Esquenazi, Music Jacobo Lieberman and Leonardo Heiblum)

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