Leland Ko
cello
Leland Ko, a cellist of Chinese-Canadian descent, is the Third Prize winner of the celebrated 2026 Cello Queen Elisabeth Competition, recipient of a 2026 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and First Prize winner at the prestigious 2024 Naumburg International Cello Competition. In 2023, he won First Prize, the J.S. Bach Special Prize, and the Orchestra of the Americas Prize at the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (OSM) Competition, leading to his concerto debut with the orchestra this past season. That same year, he was named a Young Artist in Residence for American Public Media’s Performance Today. Highlights of Leland’s 2025–2026 season include debuts with the Orchestre Symphonique de Sherbrooke and the DuPage Symphony, as well as performances at Carnegie Hall, Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, and Kaufman Music Center’s Merkin Hall.
Special Collaborations
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As part of the CAG on Tour program, OAK Trio is a new ensemble comprising prize-winning soloists pianist Evren Ozel, violinist Nathan Amaral, and cellist Leland Ko, all alumni of the New England Conservatory. The Trio program, entitled Common Spirit, seeks to explore unique cultural songs and dances - each culture’s way of capturing and affirming the spirit of its people. Here is a link to their program.
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The Phaidros Quartet is the junction of four unique, sensitive, and sincere individuals, founded not just out of love for the genre, but out of a devotion to something deeply human that exists just as much as an experience shared between people as it does as notes encoded on a page.
The quartet debuted at the renowned Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont and is comprised of violinists Stephanie Zyzak & Claire Bourg; violist Zhanbo Zheng; and cellist Leland Ko. Please click here for program details.
Click here to watch performances of the Beethoven String Quartet No. 7 in F major, Op. 59 No. 1 and Stravinsky Three Pieces for String Quartet.