Leila Josefowicz is a Canadian-born classical violinist who has won acclaim in concert halls around the world, released Grammy nominated albums and performed with many great orchestras including the London Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw, Orquestra Nacional de España, Sydney Symphony and Finnish Radio Symphony. Composers such as John Adams, Steven Mackey, Colin Matthews and Esa-Pekka Salonen have written violin concertos for her and she has played at the Kennedy Center and at the BBC Proms from the Royal Albert Hall in London.
Born in Ontario, Canada she grew up in Los Angeles, California where she picked up the violin at a very early age and studied at the Colburn School and later, after her family moved to Philadelphia, at the Curtis Institute of Music. Regarded as a child prodigy she performed with major orchestras across America and Canada while still a teenager and made her Carnegie Hall debut in 1994 with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields conducted by Neville Marriner. Her album 'Bohemian Rhapsodies' with Marriner and the orchestra went to number 32 on the Billboard Classical Albums Chart in 1997. 'Violin for Anne Rice' with bass player Ira Coleman, cellist Charles Curtis, guitarist Brandon Ross and percussionist Cyro Baptista, went to number 13 on the chart in 1997.
She was nominated for her first Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance for the 2004 album 'John Adams: Road Movies'. She was nominated in the same category in 2010 for 'Schoenberg: String Quartets Nos. 3 & 4' with the Fred Sherry Quartet. 'Salonen: Violin Concerto: Nyx' (2013) with the Finnish RSO conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen won her a Grammy Award nomination for Best Classical Instrumental Solo and she was nominated in the same category for 'John Adams: Scheherazade. 2' with the St. Louis Symphony conducted by David Robertson in 2016. The recording went to number eight on the Billboard Classical Albums Chart. In 2018 Josefowicz set concert appearances with Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias.
