Alumnus Leon awarded 2024 Cobbett Medal for Services to Chamber Music

The Worshipful Company of Musicians will award its 2024 William Willson Cobbett Medal for services to chamber music to RNCM alumnus Leon Bosch. He will be the first double bass player to be so honoured since the medal was first awarded in 1924.  

The British virtuoso, who was born in Cape Town in 1961 before moving to the UK to study at the RNCM, will also become the first Black musician to receive the award. 

Leon is artistic director of I Musicanti, a mixed instrument ensemble comprising some of the most experienced and respected musicians in the UK, and founder of the Ubuntu Ensemble, which comprises fellow South Africa-born musicians now based in the UK. 

Throughout his career, Leon has performed chamber music in duo partnerships, notably with John Thwaites, Sung-Suk Kang and his current duo partner, Rebeca Omordia. His many duo recordings, principally for Meridian Records, include surveys of British, South African, Russian and Hungarian double bass music as well as portraits of Giovanni Bottesini, Allan Stephenson and two Catalan virtuosos, Pedro Valls and Josep Cervera. 

Leon has a long history of chamber music guest collaborations with musicians of the highest calibre dating back to his student days. Other collaborations include with the Lindsay, Brodsky and Belcea string quartets, as well as with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, with whom he was principal double bass from 1995 until 2014. He has also appeared as a concerto soloist with internationally renowned orchestras and conductors, having made his solo debut with the Philharmonia orchestra under Antony Beaumont in 1984. 

Born in Cape Town, Leon Bosch began studying the double bass as a music student at the University of Cape Town, having enrolled as a cellist. He had initially hoped to study law but, having been imprisoned as a youth for anti-apartheid activities, was prevented from doing so by apartheid authorities. On graduating, he moved to Manchester to study for the PPRNCM Diploma at the RNCM. He became a British citizen in 2000.  

He says: ‘I am both honoured and gratified to receive this medal, not only because of the long history of illustrious previous recipients but also because chamber music has been a central part of my musical life throughout my career – I can remember as a student playing with the Amadeus Quartet and making my first appearance at Wigmore Hall with Maria Joao Pires. I have long believed that chamber music offers the ideal possibility for musicians to express themselves with total artistic freedom, and is one of the ideal ways that classical music has for sharing that sense of freedom with audiences and colleagues alike.’

16 July 2024