Biography

Lev Mamuya is equally fascinated by how culture is made, how it’s digested, and how it shapes our lived experiences. An active arts administrator, writer, and composer-performer, Mamuya’s Los Angeles-based work encompasses music, written media, and more.

First, Mamuya found music—a cellist since the age of three, he spent many formative summers at the Perlman Music Program before completing his MM in cello performance at New England Conservatory in 2019, studying with Paul Katz and Yeesun Kim. The love for music-making in community he developed there has guided musical pursuits including commissions from the Renaissance String Quartet, film soundtrack work with director Byung Joon Lee, recent performances with Soundbox Ventures, Castle of Our Skins, and A Far Cry, and his previous membership in the Semiosis and Boston Public Quartets.

Along the way, he discovered a passion for writing courtesy of his college literary magazine The Harvard Advocate, receiving a B.A. in History and Literature from Harvard in 2018. A critic, non-fiction writer, and poet, his work examining music, food, television, and popular culture has appeared in The Drift, San Francisco Classical Voice, and the Boston Musical Intelligencer amongst other outlets. He has contributed program notes for the San Francisco Symphony and album liner notes for violinist Max Tan and cellist Daniel Hass. He was the recipient of the runner-up award at the 2022 Rubin Institute for Music Criticism.

Both these pursuits inform his perspective as an arts administrator. Currently serving as a publicist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Mamuya has also worked with From the Top, America’s largest national platform celebrating young classically-trained musicians, and contributed press efforts for a variety of institutional and individual clients as a freelance publicist.