Veronica Leahy

Veronica Leahy is a composer, multi-woodwindist, pianist, and music director based in New York City. As a saxophonist, Veronica has performed with artists such as Terri Lyne Carrington, Kris Davis, Ted Nash, Jon Batiste and Stay Human, Kurt Elling, Christian Sands, Stew, and the Diva Jazz Orchestra. She has appeared at venues including Lincoln Center, Dizzy’s Club, Birdland, 54 Below, Scullers, Snug Harbor, and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Veronica was selected as a member of the GRAMMY Jazz Band and a National YoungArts Foundation Finalist. Her festival appearances include the Monterey Jazz Festival, Winter Jazzfest, JAS Aspen, the Charles River Jazz Fest, Caramoor Jazz Festival, Hamptons Jazz Festival, and the Ravinia Music Festival, where she was a Steans Music Institute fellow. Veronica can be heard on the GRAMMY Award-winning album New Standards, Vol. 1, performing on bass clarinet.

As a composer, Veronica explores the boundaries and intersections of genres. Her composition “20/20” for jazz combo was published in New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets by Women Composers (Berklee Press). Named an emerging composer by Tribeca New Music, she earned Harvard University’s Hugh F. MacColl Prize for instrumental composition for her soprano sax and piano duet “closeness comes with distance.” Her piece for choir and soprano saxophone, Hold Fast to Dreams, was premiered at Harvard’s 2023 Baccalaureate Ceremony. Veronica’s senior thesis entitled American Tonic, which received highest honors, is an original song cycle that explores her own chronic illness of type 1 diabetes alongside the insulin crisis. Her advisor on the project was Prof. Vijay Iyer, Franklin D and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts. Recently, she served as composer-in-residence with Cambridge Common Voices, a neurodiverse vocal ensemble led by Andrew Clark. Her works were presented in Cambridge and New York City by members of the choir this year.

While attending Harvard, Veronica composed the music for four full-length original musicals and was awarded Harvard’s Radcliffe Doris Cohen Levi Prize for achievement in musical theater. Her most recent musical, Queen of Magic, premiered to sold-out audiences at the Loeb Ex theater in December 2022. She served as the composer for Harvard’s iconic Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the oldest theater company in the United States, for two seasons. Veronica has also worked at the American Repertory Theater (ART) on numerous occasions, including as music assistant for Sergio Trujillo’s Real Women Have Curves and for Whitney White’s Macbeth in Stride. She co-music directed and composed music for Little Amal Walks Across America which was also presented by ART. Last year, she served as a music director and composer for Harvard’s Presidential Inauguration, working alongside Tony Award-winning director Diane Paulus.

As a passionate advocate for the arts, Veronica founded the Harvard Student Composers Festival. This annual symposium seeks to foster open-minded dialogue around music composition and to empower students through sharing their works regardless of genre. This event has brought together students and world-renowned composers alike to share and discuss original pieces. It has featured guest artists such as Rubén Blades, Michael R. Jackson, Tania León, Linda May Oh, and Joshua Redman.

Veronica recently graduated summa cum laude from Harvard where she studied in the dual degree program with Berklee College of Music. While an undergraduate, she was recognized for her academic achievement through the Sophia Freund Prize and the Detur Book Award. At Berklee, she was part of the Jazz and Gender Justice Institute and served as the lead alto saxophonist in the school’s premiere big band. Currently, Veronica is a member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop in New York and is pursuing a Master of Music in Jazz Saxophone at The Juilliard School.