Leia Zhu
The Violin Girl
Leia Zhu
Leia Zhu is a British-Chinese classical violinist, violin virtuoso and internationally acclaimed soloist, recognised as one of the most distinctive young artists of her generation.
Since making her professional debut at four, she has performed in more than 20 countries with leading orchestras and at major venues including the London Symphony Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle, Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich with Paavo Järvi, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall and Wigmore Hall.
In 2025, Leia was named OPUS KLASSIK Young Talent of the Year. She has been recognised as a Classic FM 30 Under 30 artist and BBC Music Magazine Rising Star and nominated for the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist Award. She became the youngest artist ever represented by HarrisonParrott at 12 and Artist-in-Residence with the London Mozart Players at 14.
Leia is Patron of the HarrisonParrott Foundation and Education Ambassador for the London Mozart Players, supporting wider access to music through educational outreach and workshops.
Through her social platforms, she connects with a new generation of audiences and shares the reality of life as a young musician, from practice and performance preparation to backstage moments, travel and musical discoveries, alongside fundraising and community initiatives.
An award-winning recording artist and author, Leia has released acclaimed recordings and written Bows, Strings and Dreams. She is based in London and the founder of Culture Meets Capital, championing creating connections between the cultural life of the United Kingdom and the institutions that sustain it.
As featured on
15 years on stage
2011 · age 4
Debut concert
Leia gives her first public concert at Newcastle City Hall, at the North East Last Night of the Proms in her hometown of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK before an audience of over 2,000 people.
2011 · age 5
First tour
Leia makes her first UK tour at the age of five, performing with the English Philharmonic Ensemble in candlelit concerts across North England: Carlisle, Hexham, Newcastle and Beverley.
2012 · age 5
First solo recital
Leia's first solo recital was a 45-minute programme that included works by Paganini and Monti.
2013 · age 6
First international tour
Leia makes her first international tour, performing across nine cities in Spain with the Los Angeles-based Classical Concert Chamber Orchestra.
The beginning of her musical journey around the world!
2014 · age 7
A royal reply
Leia invites Queen Elizabeth II to her recital at Hexham Abbey Festival and receives a reply from Buckingham Palace wishing her a happy and successful concert day.
2013-2019
Growing up on the international stage
Between the ages of six and twelve, Leia’s musical world expands across 18 countries, where she collaborates with orchestras including the Russian National Orchestra, Belgian National Orchestra, Zürich Chamber Orchestra, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and at venues and festivals including the European Parliament, Barbican Centre, Royal Festival Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, KKL Luzern, Mariinsky Theatre, BOZAR, Salzburg Festival and Lucerne Festival.
2016 · age 8
The Violin Girl goes online
Leia starts sharing YouTube vlogs as The Violin Girl, filming her practice, performance preparation, backstage moments, travel days and musical discoveries. What starts as a way to share her journey with friends soon opens out to friends around the world...
Vlog 6: Behind the scenes at Barbican Centre, 2016
Vlog 28: On tour in the Tartarstan Republic, 2016
Vlog 49: Paganini Concerto in St. Petersburg, 2017
Researching Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, 2017
Paganini and Wieniawski challenge in 5 days, 2017
On tour in Germany, 2019
2019 · age 12
The youngest artist at a world-leading classical agency
Leia becomes the youngest artist at age 12 to join HarrisonParrott, the London-based international classical music agency founded in 1969, under the representation of co-founder and Executive Chairman Jasper Parrott. Announced during the agency’s 50th anniversary year, the moment is the beginning of a new international chapter.
2020 · age 13
The concert hall moves online
When the pandemic closes concert halls, Leia’s projects continue online. She launches HarrisonParrott’s partnership with Google Arts & Culture, introducing Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst and performing The Last Rose of Summer and Der Erlkönig.
2021 · age 14
The return to live music
After eighteen months of cancelled concerts, Leia's first live performance is with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle at BMW Classics in Trafalgar Square. Thousands watch in London, with the concert livestreamed worldwide.
2021 · age 15
A violin solo for 27 million viewers
Leia joins Westlife for You Raise Me Up during the Irish band’s WeChat livestream for China, bringing classical violin to a global audience of around 27 million viewers.
2021 & 2022 · age 15
BBC Music Magazine Rising Star and Classic FM 30 under 30
Leia is named a Rising Star by BBC Music Magazine in its Christmas 2021 edition. She is recognised as one of Classic FM’s 30 brilliant young musicians under 30 in the station’s 30th birthday year; at fifteen, she is the youngest musician on the list.
2022
Championing access to music
Leia becomes a Patron of the HarrisonParrott Foundation, supporting its mission to champion equity, diversity and inclusion in the arts and broaden access to music for younger audiences.
She is also appointed an Education Ambassador for London Mozart Players, helping bring music education, workshops and careers insight to children and young people.
2023 · age 16
Tchaikovsky at the Tonhalle
Leia makes her concerto debut with Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto under Paavo Järvi in an Orpheum Foundation concert at the Grosse Tonhalle, Zürich.
2023 · age 16
Bows, Strings and Dreams
After leaving full-time education with eight A* grades at GCSE, Leia publishes her memoir
Bows, Strings and Dreams, documenting growing up on the international stage through stories of practice, travel, family, concerts and life as a young musician.
The book becomes an Amazon category bestseller and is praised by The Strad, one of the world’s leading string music magazines, for 'dispelling the mystique of life as an elite performer.'
2023
Fundraising
Leia performs and fundraises for the Lord Mayor's Appeal, the City of London's flagship civic charity at Guildhall, which raises a record £180,000.
2024
A second discipline
The sudden cancellation of concerts during the pandemic exposed Leia to the financial insecurity facing professional musicians. It prompted her to pursue formal financial education and she completed the Diploma for Financial Advisers at the London Institute of Banking & Finance at 17.
2024 · age 17
Abu Dhabi Festival residency
At Abu Dhabi Festival, Leia leads 30 selected young musicians from across the UAE through an intensive week of orchestra rehearsals, chamber music sessions, one-to-one masterclasses and performance coaching. At the closing concert at The British School Al Khubairat, she hosts, conducts and performs.
2024 · age 17
BBC Proms debut at the Royal Albert Hall
Leia makes her BBC Proms debut at the Royal Albert Hall in two sold-out CBeebies Proms, performing for thousands of children and families, many experiencing classical music for the first time. Sharing the stage with the presenters she grew up watching, she introduces the violin to a new generation of listeners, with the concert later broadcast and repeated on CBeebies and BBC iPlayer.
2024 · age 18
World Children’s Day with UNICEF
In her first concert as an adult, Leia opens the Khachaturian International Festival with the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra under Sergey Smbatyan, performing Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto in partnership with UNICEF to mark World Children’s Day and the 35th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
2025
The Rest is History at the Royal Albert Hall
Leia returns to the Royal Albert Hall for two sold-out live orchestra shows with The Rest Is History, the world’s most popular history podcast. Reuniting with the Philharmonia Orchestra, she performs where classical music, storytelling and her own love of history meet.
2025
Debut recording, internationally acclaimed
Recorded shortly after her seventeenth birthday in 2023, Leia’s debut album Saint-Saëns: The Complete Concertos is released on Berlin Classics with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under Howard Griffiths.
The recording is praised by critics in the UK and Germany, named BBC Music Magazine’s Concerto Choice and nominated in the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics' Award).
2025 · age 18
Recognised by Germany's most prestigious classical music prize
Leia wins OPUS KLASSIK Young Talent of the Year for her debut recording, becoming one of the youngest recipients in the award’s history and the youngest English violinist to receive the distinction. At the televised gala at Konzerthaus Berlin, broadcast by ZDF, she performs with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin under Anu Tali.
2026
Freedom of the City of London
At 19, Leia receives the Freedom of the City of London, one of the UK's oldest civic honours, through the Worshipful Company of International Bankers, becoming one of the youngest recipients of the historic civic distinction and the first classical musician nominated through the Company.
The honour recognises her work spanning music, financial education and the relationship between culture and finance.
2026
Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
Leia is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, one of the world’s oldest and most distinguished cross-disciplinary communities, recognising her work bringing together culture, finance and civic life.
2026
Culture Meets Capital
Leia founds Culture Meets Capital, bringing together the cultural, financial and civic worlds she has spent her life moving between. Rooted in the City of London and oriented towards the wider creative economy, CMC is being built to make culture financially strong and capital culturally rich.
'Culture needs capital. Capital needs soul.
I intend to be that bridge.''
— Leia Zhu
2024 · age 17
A recording with a living master
Leia records Tigran Mansurian’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra under Sergey Smbatyan, as part of celebrations for the composer’s 85th birthday.
With Mansurian himself present in the studio, she has the rare opportunity to work directly with the composer and exchange ideas about his music as the recording takes shape.
2021 · age 14
Youngest Artist-in-Residence of UK's longest-established chamber orchestra
Leia is appointed Artist-in-Residence with London Mozart Players, the UK’s longest-established chamber orchestra. The two-year residency includes concerto performances, chamber music, mentorship and education outreach projects with young musicians and schools across London and the UK.
Upcoming
concerts
with more to be announced...
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Selected press quotes
★★★★★
'In agility and sleight of hand our young British musician fears no one — but she also knows how to speak with finesse... The quality of her sound, always velvety, never aggressive, does the rest.'
Diapason · France
Jacques Bonnaure
★★★★★
BBC Music Magazine · UK
Christopher Dingle
'Leia Zhu masters the technical hurdles with a light hand, evident in every bravura passage — not least in the fast closing section of the Rondo capriccioso, which flies past as though weightless. Alongside a commanding soloistic brilliance, the young violinist has a sensitive feel for the delicate, quiet notes.'
Fono Forum · Germany
Norbert Hornig
'In the concertos' many lyrical moments, she convinces with a sense of shaping, changes of colour, and an at times almost melancholy restraint that one could hardly expect from an 18-year-old.'
Musik&Theater · Switzerland
Reinmar Wagner
OrchesterGraben · Germany
Stefan Pillhofer
★★★★★
'Violin playing saturated in colour and shaped with intelligently modulated dynamics — one can scarcely believe Leia Zhu was just 17 at the time of the recording.'
Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung · Germany
Lars von der Gönna
The award-winning debut album
'This is quite a debut'
★★★★★
In 2025, Leia Zhu released her debut album, Camille Saint-Saëns: Complete Concertos on Berlin Classics with support from the Orpheum Foundation, featuring Saint-Saëns’ Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2, Introduction et Rondo Capriccioso and Havanaise. It was recorded with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under conductor Howard Griffiths.
The recording was awarded the OPUS KLASSIK Young Talent of the Year 2025, Germany’s most prestigious award for outstanding musical achievement in the field of classical music.
It was also selected for the Longlist 2/2025 of the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, one of the leading critical distinctions for recorded music in the German-speaking world.
A picture is worth a thousand words
Click each picture for the backstory...
In October 2023, aged 16, Leia Zhu published her first book, Bows, Strings and Dreams — a personal account of growing up as a young violinist and experiencing the musical world from the concert stage.
Bows, Strings and Dreams
Leia documents her journey, from her earliest memories with the violin through her life as an international performer, interweaving stories from her childhood, concert experiences and diary excerpts. An autobiography of a young classical musician, it shares a personal perspective on learning the violin, growing up in the world of classical music and life as a professional performer.
The book reached No. 1 in Teen & Young Adult Classical Music on Amazon US, No. 2 in Classical Music Books among Young Adults on Amazon UK, and No. 1 in History of Music for Young Adults on Amazon Australia.
Culture, capital and civic life
Making culture financially strong.
Making capital culturally rich.
In 2020, Leia watched musicians she had grown up admiring face sudden financial collapse. Not a pandemic problem — a structural one, centuries in the making.
In 2023, alongside her GCSEs and international performance commitments, she began studying for the Level 4 Diploma for Financial Advisers (DipFA) with the London Institute of Banking & Finance. She qualified in 2024, at 17 — one of the youngest holders of the DipFA in the UK.
Leia is an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (ACSI), is working towards the Institute's highest professional qualification and serves on the Committee of the CISI's Young Professionals Network.
In April 2026 she received the Freedom of the City of London, conferred by the City of London Corporation at Guildhall, nominated by the Worshipful Company of International Bankers — the first classical musician nominated through the livery company representing international banking and financial services and among the youngest recipients. The following month she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), which recognises her work and wider contribution across culture and society.
'Culture and finance are not opposing forces. They never were.'
— Leia Zhu, Founder and Director of Culture Meets Capital
Culture Meets Capital was founded by Leia in 2026 in the City of London. The platform explores the relationship between culture, capital and civic life, and building stronger connections between the people who create cultural value and the institutions that sustain it.
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Contact
For concert bookings
Leia Zhu is represented by HarrisonParrott
Jasper Parrott
Executive Chairman HP Group & Associated Companies
jasper.parrott@harrisonparrott.co.uk
+44 (0)7917 080 067
Federico Hernandez
General Manager HarrisonParrott Madrid &
Latin American Business
federico.hernandez@harrisonparrott.es
+44 (0)750 001 4513
Lucía Camacho Acevedo
Associate Artist Relations Manager
lucia.acevedo@harrisonparrott.co.uk
+44 (0)758 4488 629