About

Leyna Marika Papach is an interdisciplinary composer from Japan and the United States. With music as her central lens, she has created a body of work spanning theater, opera, dance, poetry, film, and the visual arts, exploring themes of displacement and unrootedness, the cosmology of music, ghosts, magic, and motherhood.

Her work has been presented in Europe, Japan, West Africa, and the US, with support from the MAP Fund, NEA, HERE Arts Center, Minnesota Opera, and BAX. She is a recipient of the ACF Music Creators Award (2019), the McKnight Composer Fellowship (2024), and the Japan/US Friendship Commission Fellowship (2008).

Leyna has collaborated with artists across disciplines, including playwright Aya Ogawa, director Eric Ting, musicians Nels Cline and Tapan Kanti Baidya, choreographers Clarinda Mac Low and Michel Kouakou, and poets Will Alexander and Layli Long Soldier. She has also performed as a violinist for Taylor Mac, J.G. Thirlwell, and the Geraldine Fibbers. Her ongoing dance duet with Butoh dancer Chikako Bando, KAGEGOTO (shadow things), explores the intersection of music, movement, and poetry, while her duet WAVES, with Demeun Strange, ventures into the sonic realms of ambient dreamscapes.

Leyna studied violin at the Prague Academy of Music and holds an MA in Theater-Dance Studies from DAS Theater (Amsterdam) and an MFA in Sound/Music/Interdisciplinary Studies from Bard College.