..Music....Video....Photography....About....Contact....Download.. Jessica Leza is a multimedia artist specializing in sound art. Native to the third coast, the urban bayou environment of Houston instills her work with a sense of tension between the modernity of a concrete Space City and the organic sound environments of the storm-drenched great piney woods. Jessica grew up singing in community choirs and exploring the possibilities of cassette tape sound collage. Early performance experiences touring France with the North Houston Youth Chorale or with pop choirs in Moscow, Russia allowed her to meet contemporary composers and professional musicians. A meeting with jazz musician and genre-spanning composer Hannibal Lokumbe propelled Jessica to the University of North Texas, where she studied music composition, theory, and vocal performance. North Texas studios introduced Jessica to the unconventional and surprising world of sound as a vast tapestry of possibilities. The early sensibility that attracted her to creating manual tape sound collages developed into a series of works that united classical and jazz influenced vocal melodies with abstract electronics. In 2004, while under the tutelage of Joseph Butch Rovan, Phil Winsor, & Dr. Joe Klein, Jessica began exploring the capabilities of melding this music with the visual and performing arts - most specifically, stop motion animation. The introduction of visual work into the musical arts allowed her to integrate a background in darkroom photography as well, creating new opportunities for exhibition and performance. In 2002 and 2004 she embarked on a field study of the traditional music and artistic traditions of Taiwan and Mainland China under the direction of Dr. Gene Cho. After completing the bachelor's degree in music composition Jessica moved to Xiangtan, China to teach business English in the International School of the Hunan Institute of Engineering. Her photos capturing southern Chinese life have since been recognized by UNICEF and the Prix de la Photographie Paris and now hang in public and private art collections spanning the globe. After returning to Houston her music, music videos, and photography were shown in international festivals from Kunming to New York City, recognized by such diverse organizations such as the FILE Electronic Language Festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the US. Jessica is now pursuing a master’s degree and bachelor’s equivalency in music therapy at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, TX. See a full Curriculum Vitae here, last updated January 2010.