Leonard Bopp is a conductor, trumpet player, curator, and educator passionate about creating and serving communities through ambitious and affecting performance experiences. A passionate champion of both classical and contemporary repertoire, Leonard is the Founder and Conductor of the BlackBox Ensemble, a New York-based contemporary music ensemble devoted to producing culturally-resonant projects rooted in creative experimentation. Under his leadership, BlackBox has performed numerous world premieres, presented performances at major museums and concert venues in NYC and beyond, and held residencies at numerous universities and educational institutions around the country.
Recent projects include a site-responsive dance performance at the Clark Art Institute, the staged premiere of Borrowed Landscape, a play by tauchgold with music by Dai Fujikura, at the Noguchi Museum, and a reprise performance as part of a series at the Smithsonian Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C. He also produced and curated the ensemble’s inaugural BlackBox Festival, a weekend-long performance series at ShapeShifter Lab and Roulette celebrating the ensemble’s fifth anniversary in January 2024. In addition to their NYC concert series, the ensemble’s 2024-2025 season includes tours to Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina, including performing the season-opening performance of the Southern Exposure Series at the University of South Carolina, and a residency at the University of Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition.
Leonard has recently studied at masterclasses with Johannes Schaefli and the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz in Radolfzell, Germany, and with Jorma Panula and the MAV Symphony Orchestra in Budapest, Hungary. He was a student in the Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Seminar in 2023 and 2024. Furthermore, he studied at the Divertimento Ensemble Conducting Academy in Moncalvo, Italy, where he was chosen to conduct the final concert at the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan. He returned to the Divertimento Ensemble as a guest conductor on their Milan concert series in February 2024, and will return once again in April 2025. In the summer of 2022, Leonard was a recipient of the American Austrian Foundation/Faber Young Conductors Fellowship, through which he was in residence at the Salzburg Festival observing rehearsals and of the Vienna Philharmonic.
Originally from upstate New York, Leonard studied trumpet at The Juilliard School Pre-College Division, where he also began studying conducting. He then earned his BA in Music and English at Williams College and his Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance.