Leonard Bopp is a conductor, trumpet player, curator, and educator passionate about creating and serving communities through ambitious and affecting performance experiences. An ardent champion of the music of our time, Leonard is the Founder and Conductor of the BlackBox Ensemble, a New York-based contemporary music ensemble reshaping the boundaries of new music. Under his leadership, BlackBox has performed numerous world premieres, presented concert programs and multidisciplinary performances at major venues in NYC and beyond, and held residencies at numerous universities and educational institutions around the country.
Leonard has recently studied at masterclasses with Johannes Schaefli and the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz in Radolfzell, Germany, Jorma Panula and the MAV Symphony Orchestra in Budapest, Hungary, and the Pierre Boulez Conducting Masterclass at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice. He also 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 has since returned to the ensemble twice as a guest conductor on their Milan concert series, first with a program of Beat Furrer and Enno Poppe in February 2024 and again in April 2025 to lead a world premiere by Eric Maestri.
Recent projects with BlackBox include: a Julius Eastman portrait concert co-curated with Isaac Jean-François, presented on Bang on a Can’s Long Play Festival and at the Whitney Museum of American Art; performances of Eastman’s Femenine with Kyle Marshall Choreography at PS21 in Chatham, NY; a site-responsive dance performance at the Clark Art Institute; and the staged premiere of Borrowed Landscape, a play by the German playwright duo tauchgold with music by Dai Fujikura, at the Noguchi Museum, with a reprise performance at the Smithsonian Museum of Asian Art. Leonard also produced and curated the ensemble’s 5th anniversary festival in January 2024, which included the ensemble’s debut at the famed new music institution Roulette. In the 2025-2026 season, Leonard will lead BlackBox in their debut at National Sawdust, featuring the U.S. premiere of Baldwin Giang’s PIPA BOY: Three Scenes from the Post-Diaspora. He also leads the group in a performance on the Composers Now Festival and in residencies at colleges and universities around the country, including in a year-long engagement as ensemble-in-residence at the University of Richmond.
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 from Williams College and his Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Michigan. He was then a 2022 American Austrian Foundation Fellow at the Salzburg Festival and a student in the Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Seminar in 2023 and 2024. Leonard is currently pursuing a Graduate Diploma at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he studies with Stefan Asbury.