Bio

Violinist Leo Appel, born in Oxford, England, performs as a soloist and chamber musician across Europe and the US. Winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Julius Isserlis prize in 2021, he has since been awarded the 2023 Prix de Festival Ravel, the 2024 audience prize at Schiermonnikoog Festival, and the 2025 Countess of Munster Musical Trust’s Peter Cropper award for most outstanding string player. This year, he won Best Soloist at the Musik-Akademie Basel for his performance of Berg’s violin concerto.

 

Since 2023, Leo has enjoyed regular appearances with the Esbjerg Ensemble, a Danish Chamber Collective. He was a 2022–23 Akademist with Kammerorchester Basel and holds a position as a New Ensemblist with London-based baroque ensemble Arcangelo for the 2024–26 seasons, seeing him collaborate with artists such as Vilde Frang and Nicolas Altstaedt. As a keen chamber musician, he is a member of the Talos Quartet, a recipient of a Tunnell Trust Award and member of Le Dimore Del Quartetto network and Musethica International.

 

Leo’s busy concerto schedule includes recent engagements with conductor Jac van Steen, Kammerorchester Basel, the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, and Sinfonieorchester Basel. As concertmaster of the newly-founded Empyrean Orchestra, he made solo appearances in Zurich’s Tonhalle in 2025. Leo is invited to guest-lead a number of orchestras, most recently Orquestra Vigo 430 in Spain.

 

Central to Leo’s performing work is the creation and direction of large-scale, narrative-driven musical projects. He directed a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion at Trinity College, Cambridge, leading from the violin. In 2019, he founded an ensemble with countertenor Hugh Cutting dedicated to exploring and revitalising Judeo-Spanish and Judeo-Arabic repertoire. He conducted his own fieldwork, collecting and recording traditional tunes, which he incorporates into programmes alongside historically informed performance of baroque music. All of the ensemble’s programmes are centred around his own arrangements. This work has led to a series of sold-out performances in the UK and Switzerland, and he looks forward to directing upcoming concerts later this year. Leo is a graduate of St John’s College, University of Cambridge. He studied violin with David Takeno and continued his studies on the Soloist Masters course at the Musik-Akademie Basel with Barbara Doll and baroque violin with Amandine Beyer.

 

Leo made his Wigmore Hall debut in 2024 and was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. He has collaborated with composers on a series of performances of contemporary music on Jewish themes at Kings Place, London. Leo has previous and future festival engagements at IMS Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music (UK), Marlboro (US), Yellow Barn (US), Schiermonnikoog (Netherlands), and Chalosse (France). 2026 will see him tour North America with Musicians from Marlboro, which includes concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Library of Congress, as well as collaborating with world-famous artists such as Brett Dean and Adrian Brendel. Leo has participated in masterclasses with musicians including Maxim Vengerov, Leonidas Kavakos, Steven Isserlis, Alina Ibragimova, Tabea Zimmermann, Andreas Staier, and Robert Levin. He plays a violin by Joseph Gagliano.