Musician and educator, pianist Lisa Leonard is the 2025 recipient of the Deanne and Gerald Gitner and Family Excellence in Teaching Award at Lynn University. The 2024 season took Lisa to New York where she performed Prokofiev's third Piano Concerto with the Schenectady-Saratoga Symphony Orchestra, North Carolina for the world premiere of Kenneth Frazelle's Ballade and Florida, with solo and trio performances featuring rarely performed works including Fanny Mendelssohn's Piano Trio and Richard Danielpour’s epic 2020 work, An American Mosaic.

Born in Washington, D.C., Lisa made her debut in 1982 at the age of 10 with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra. Since then, she has appeared across four continents as a soloist with orchestras including the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center and the Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel. Recent accomplishments include the world premiere of Joseph Turrin’s Sonata for Trumpet and Piano with Christopher Martin, principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic and special guest artist and pedagogue at the inaugural Collaborative Piano Festival at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Lima, Peru. Over the past three seasons, Ms. Leonard performed Brahms' Piano Concerto No.1, gave seven world premieres, including performances in Venice, Italy at the Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello, and was awarded the lifetime achievement award in music and education from the National Society of Arts and Letters of Florida. She has amassed an extensive and varied repertoire from decades of recital and recording projects with members of the American String Quartet, Empire Brass, Metropolitan Opera, Concertgebouw, Berlin, Vienna, Cleveland, and Minnesota orchestras. Ms. Leonard’s eclectic taste embraces all styles of contemporary music, including folk, Latin, avant-garde, electronic, film, and gaming music. She has worked with Elizabeth von Trapp, Gunther Schuller, George Crumb, and Katherine Balch and produced a visualization of the electronic tape voice in a video recording of Mario Davidovsky’s Synchronisms No.6. Other recordings include James Aikman’s Sonata No.3 for violin and piano with American violinist, Alexander Kerr and contemporary works for bassoon and piano with Eric Varner. 

Committed to the South Florida community, she frequently concertizes with Trio Paradigm, co-founded with violinist Dina Kostic and cellist Susan Bergeron, who are in residency at the Pettinger Center of St. Mary’s in Stuart, Florida. She serves as a member of the non-profit, Healing Sounds of Music, bringing live performances to those who cannot travel to the concert hall and leads outreach to schools serving the autistic and underprivileged communities. Lisa is honored to serve as Dame of Honour in the chivalric Order of St. John of Jerusalem Hospitaller, a 1000-year-old organization dedicated to serving the sick and poor.  Lisa received her M.M. and B.M. from the Manhattan School of Music and acknowledges a variety of mentors, including pianists, instrumentalists, and composers. Among the most influential are pianists Suzanne W. Guy, Eric Larsen, Marc Silverman, violinists from the renowned Beaux Arts and Meadowmount Piano Trios and American composers Kenneth Frazelle and David Noon. She has served on the faculties of the North Carolina School of the Arts and Luzerne Music Center. Currently, Ms. Leonard is Professor of Collaborative Piano at the Lynn University Conservatory of Music: the only purely instrumental program of its kind in the United States, which she founded 16 years ago.