Joaqui Sabina

Born in Barcelona on 22 September 1933, the composer Leonardo Balada graduated from the Conservatorio del Liceu of that city and the Juilliard School in 1960. He studied composition with Vincent Persichetti, Aaron Copland and conducting with Igor Markevitch. Since 1970 he has been teaching at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he is University Professor of Composition.
Some of his best known works were written in a dramatic avant-garde style in the 1960s (Guernica, María Sabina, Steel Symphony). He is credited with pioneering a blending of ethnic music with later avant-garde techniques, creating a very personal style starting with Sinfonía en Negro – Homage to Martin Luther King (1968), and Homage to Casals and Sarasate (1975).

Naim Label guitar virtuoso Antonio Forcione was touring Europe, when he chanced upon the stunning tone and control of twenty-something Sabina Sciubba at an after-show celebration in Hamburg. Upon his return to the UK, he made a beeline for Naim Audio with a spur-of-the-moment idea to take this amazing young lady into the studio. Antonio and Sabina exchanged demo tapes and song ideas until in the autumn of 1997, the two met at September Sound Studio in Twickenham to record an album of popular reinterpretations and originals. The resultant LP, "Meet Me In London", became Naim's most successful album to-date and is to this day cherished by audiophiles and music lovers the world over.