Name: Leland Ko
Start: 2025-09-30T19:00:00-05:00
Location: 2000 College Dr, Madisonville, KY, United States, Kentucky 42431

Glema Mahr Chamber Music Series Recital: Cellist Leland Ko
Tuesday, September 30, 2025 at 7:00 p.m.
Tickets: $25 General Admission; Students FREE
The audience will be seated onstage for this performance.
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Cellist Leland Philip Ko (b. 1998) is the kind of person who is always asking “why” — American-born but of Chinese-Canadian descent, schooled at both university and conservatory, and extremely thorough in any number of activities ranging from competitive tennis and distance-running to home-baking and origami, he wants to find the similarities between seemingly disparate things, and in doing so hopefully find something human in everything.
Described as someone with “Disarming charisma” (South Florida Classical Review) yet simultaneously as someone “Byronic” and “excelling in both poetic longing and dramatic outbursts” (Boston Classical Review), Leland has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in venues across America and abroad. He is the first prize winner of the Concours Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the Concert Artists Guild Louis and Susan Meisel Competition and the Walter W. Naumburg International Cello Competition.
Highlights for Leland’s 2025-2026 season include debuts with the Orchestre Symphonique de Sherbrooke and the DuPage Symphony, as well as at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, the Kaufman Center’s Merkin Hall, and Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall.
Leland was born and raised in Boston before attending Princeton University (A.B.), the Juilliard School (M.M.), and the New England Conservatory (A.D.). He performs on a G. B. Rugeri cello, Cremona, c. 1710, ex-Denis Vigay, on generous loan to him from Canimex Inc.; his professional development activities are generously supported by Marilyn G. and Joseph B. Schwartz. He resides in Boston, with his 13-year-old cat, Ham.