Photo by Peter Gannushkin

Leila Bordreuil (b. 1990, New York City), is a French-American cellist, composer and sound artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She embraces the cello as a primary medium for crafting music that moves fluidly between noise, contemporary classical, improvisation, and drone. In her live performances, Bordreuil challenges conventional cello practice and uses extreme amplification to summon torrents of harsh noise and lush feedback. Her ensemble compositions shift to a softer focus, in reverence to the phenomenology of sound. Sound-spatialization, room resonance, and environmental sound are used as phantom instruments to create slowly unfolding pieces that reward collective deep listening.

Bordreuil’s panoramic vision of form and genre is reflected in the diversity of her frequent collaborators: Tamio Shiraishi (Fushitutsa), Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Kali Malone, Laurel Halo, Drew McDowall (Coil), Julia Santoli and Luke Stewart (Irreversible Entanglements).
A longstanding player of Improvised Music, Bordreuil’s practice is deeply collaborative and rooted in the traditions of improvisation and experimentation. Her musical language stems from sonic explorations with improvisers such as  Marina Rosenfeld, Bill Nace, Susan Alcorn, Zeena Parkins, Toshimaru Nakamura, Nate Wooley, Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Joanna Mattrey, Michael Foster, Zach Rowden, Thurston Moore, Senyawa and many others.
She has performed at venues including Lincoln Center, The Whitney Museum, MoMA PS1, The Kitchen, The Stone, Barbican (London), Le Guess Who (Utrecht), Berlin Atonal, Melbourne Recital Hall, and countless underground spaces across the USA. She is a 2025 Camargo Foundation Fellow (Cassis, France), and was a 2022-23 Jerome Foundation Fellow. Past residencies include Haus der Kunst, Munich with Puce Mary, Ina GRM, Paris, E.M.S, Stockholm, with Kali Malone, the MacDowell Colony, and Issue Project Room.

Her latest release, the “time-dilating” solo album 1991, Summer, Huntington Garage Fire, is out on Aaron Dilloway’s imprint Hanson Records.