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recent work: 2008 — 2007 — 2006 — 2005 — 2004
In April Leo was invited to conduct and perform as soloist in the inaugural concerts of Thailand's first dedicated chamber orchestra. Founded by Richard Harvey and The Royal Overseas League, The Siam Chamber Orchestra performed an all-Mozart programme featuring the Sinfonia Concertante (Leo playing solo violin along with Shanghai Conservatory professor Nian Liu playing viola), the Clarinet Concerto with Richard Harvey as soloist, and Symphony No.41 'Jupiter'. The concerts, at the Grand Ballroom of the Nai Lert Park Hotel in Bangkok, and at The Globe Theatre, Regent's School, Pattaya were well attended and rapturously received. Plans are already afoot for more concerts both in Bangkok and around the country later in the year.
2008 has also seen Leo returning to Australia for a week as Artist-in-Residence at The Sydney Conservatorium. He gave performance classes and private lessons, and coached the orchestra and several chamber music ensembles. It was a well-received and highly productive week that should lead to further future collaboration.
The highlight of the 2006/7 season was the formation of 'The Campus Camerata', a versatile orchestral force that aims to combine, under Leo's artistic direction, the best of students from Thai and International Schools and Universities with their professional teachers who themselves constitute the top instrumental musicians in Bangkok.
In November 2006, nineteen students from seven different Bangkok educational institutions collaborated in a well-attended and highly acclaimed performance of all four Bach violin concerti (A minor, E major, oboe/violin and two violins) directed by Leo from the violin, and featuring Bangkok's premiere oboist, Silapakorn Professor Damrih Banawitayakit, and Shrewsbury School Music Scholar Shunsuke Takemura. The concert was held at The Professor Sangvian Indaravijaya Auditorium at The Stock Exchange of Thailand, and was generously sponsored by Oleochem (Thailand) Ltd., Shrewsbury International and Bangkok Patana Schools, and produced by The Bangkok Music Society and Settrade.
The ensemble's next performance took place in March 2007 at the Khunying Sumanee Memorial Hall at Shrewsbury International School.
Twenty-two students played alongside seventeen professional instrumentalists as Leo conducted the full combined orchestra in performances of Mozart's Symphony No. 38 in D ('Prague'), and Haydn's London Symphony No. 102 in B flat. The orchestra leader for the occasion was one of Bangkok's finest violinists, the Associate Dean of Silapakorn University, Ajarn Tasana Navagajara.
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