Fourteen-year-old British violinist Leia has performed with prestigious ensembles and orchestras across the globe, including Festival Strings Lucerne, Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra and the National Orchestra of Belgium. She has played at the Salzburg, Lucerne, Rheingau Musik, Mozartfest Würzburg, White Nights and Trans-Siberian Art Festivals, to name a few, and her musical journey has also taken her to major concert halls across Europe, including the Royal Festival Hall, Brussels’ BOZAR, Berliner Philharmonie and Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Concert Hall.
Zhu’s UK concerto debut came in February 2020 with the English Chamber Orchestra, with whom she perfomed Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Dvořák’s Romance under conductor Joseph Wolfe. In 2019, she embarked on a two-week, six-city tour of Israel with the Tel Aviv Soloists Ensemble, and she has previously toured Switzerland and Germany with Festival Strings Lucerne, performed across the north of England as soloist with the English Philharmonic Ensemble, and toured Spain with the Los Angeles-based Classical Concert Chamber Orchestra. Special collaborations have included playing the 5th movement of Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, conducted by Maxim Vengerov with the National Orchestra of Belgium at BOZAR in 2016, performing Sarasate’s Navarra for two violins with Noah Bendix-Balgley (concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra) at the Berliner Philharmonie in 2017, and sharing the stage with Roby Lakatos in Monti’s Czardas, accompanied by the Russian State Symphony Orchestra, broadcast live to an audience of millions in 2018.
