Leilehua Lanzilotti (b. 1983) is a Kanaka Maoli composer, multimedia artist, curator, scholar, and educator. As a composer, Lanzilotti’s works are characterized by expansive explorations of timbre. This aesthetic extends to their experimental film work the sky in our hands, our hands in the sky, currently on tour through 2026. The work combines the recorded sounds of Toshiko Takaezu’s closed forms with footage shot on the island of Hawaiʻi — at the base of Kīlauea, the slopes of Mauna Loa, and the top of Mauna Kea. It honors these wahi pana (translated literally as “places with a heartbeat”) featured throughout.

Lanzilotti was honored to be a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Music for with eyes the color of time (commissioned by the String Orchestra of Brooklyn), which the Pulitzer committee called, “a vibrant composition...that distinctly combines experimental string textures and episodes of melting lyricism.”

A SHIFT – Transformative Change and Indigenous Arts awardee from the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, Dr. Lanzilotti has received additional distinguished fellowships and residencies through The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Casa Wabi, Bogliasco Foundation, The Merwin Conservancy, the McKnight Visiting Composer Residency Program, and the Macgeorge Fellowship at the University of Melbourne.

As a recording artist, Lanzilotti has played on albums from Björk's Vulnicura Live and Joan Osborne's Love and Hate, to Dai Fujikura's Wayfinder concerto as a soloist with the Nagoya Philharmonic.