Kendra Preston Leonard

Kendra Preston Leonard (born June 11, 1974, New Orleans) is an American musicologist. She specialized in women in music and music in screen history in 20th century France, Britain, and America.

Education
She studied as a cellist at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, The Peabody Conservatory, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the University of Miami before studying musicology at the University of Cincinnati. She received her PhD from the University of Sunderland.

She held the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library’s Thornton Wilder Fellowship from Yale University (2009-2010). She taught musicology at Westminster Choir College from 2009-2011. She is the Executive Director of the Silent Film Sound and Music Archive, and librettist of Marie Curie Learns to Swim, a one act opera with music by Jessica Rudman.

Awards and honors
She won the inaugural Judith Tick Fellowship from the Society for American Music (2013-2014) for research on Louise Talma.

Selected publications

 * Louise Talma: A Life in Composition, Ashgate Publishing, 2014


 * Shakespeare, Madness and Music: Scoring Insanity in Cinematic Adaptations, Scarecrow Press, 2009
 * The Conservatoire Américain: a History, Scarecrow Press, 2007