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Leigh Pilzer
Lecturer, Jazz Theory & Arranging
Wind & Percussion Division
B.M.,Berklee College of Music; M.M., M.M. University of Maryland
Leigh Pilzer is a native of the Washington, DC metropolitan area. She began her musical studies on piano and cello, switching to saxophone after hearing the music of the Count Basie Orchestra. She attended Berklee College of Music where she majored in Jazz Composition and Arranging. At Berklee her teachers included Greg Hopkins, Herb Pomeroy, Joe Viola, and Jimmy Mosher.
After graduating from Berklee Leigh returned to Washington, where she has been working as a freelance performer since. She performs regularly with the National Symphony Orchestra at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Wolf Trap Farm Park, Carter Barron Amphitheater, and on the televised programs "The National Memorial Day Concert" and "A Capitol Fourth." She has traveled with the orchestra nationally and internationally. She also performs with the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. In January, 2008 she appeared with the SJMO at the 35th Annual IAJE Conference in Toronto, where it was the featured ensemble for the NEA Jazz Masters Awards concert. In February, 2008 she will travel with the orchestra on its first trip to Egypt.
Leigh's arrangements have been played by many of the DC-based premier military big bands and chamber ensembles. In 2003 UFRJazz Ensemble in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil presented a concert of Leigh's big band arrangements, also featuring Leigh as soloist. Recently, one of her brass quintet arrangements was included in the program at the 4th Annual Baltimore Holiday Brass concert. She has contributed horn section arrangements to recordings by Chuck Brown and Eva Cassidy.
Leigh is a member of The DIVA Jazz Orchestra and the Old Line Quartet, and co-leads a jazz quintet with trombonist Jen Krupa.
