Leena Culhane

Leena Culhane, pronounced LENN-uh Cul-HAYNE, is an interdisciplinary artist living in Los Angeles, CA.

Ever the libra, Leena’s fifth record, 2020’s Sleepwalker, is about the space between worlds. “The title is two-fold: it evokes a sort of dreaminess and an openness that I was exploring in my music, and it also references these unconscious spaces that made me feel I was safe but really, I was hiding. I thought that averting my gaze would make the fear disappear, but all it ever did was hold me back. Shining some light on those darker corners through this record has been edifying, challenging, and ultimately healing. Everything is a work in progress. I believe that we are never just one thing, and that giving ourselves permission to be more prismatic is a freedom and a right.” Duality is intrinsic to this record and to her life. 

Leena started playing piano at an early age, learning to read notes before words. Music lessons as a child opened up a new universe of composition and, eventually, songwriting that Leena took with her into her young adult life. She spent her teens playing with San Francisco-based bands as a keyboardist and later a guitarist, which eventually lead to opening for local luminaries such as Bonnie Raitt and The Dead. Years of backing up other bands and playing solo gigs around the Bay Area allowed her to hone a growing love of performance, including work as an actor at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater. 

Her work in the Bay Area earned her a spot in the Acting program at the School of Theater, Film, & Television at UCLA where, among other things, she focused on the imperatives of keen observation and true connection in her storytelling. She followed up her EP (released in her high school years) by producing and self-releasing her first full-length album, Songs for the Record, while in her junior year of college. After graduating from UCLA, she quickly set to work co-founding Blue Flamingo, a collaborative theater company that workshops and devises site-specific, immersive performance in New York and LA.