Join Music For Youth on October 2 at Pequot Library in Southport for the first Emerging Artists Concert of the season, featuring acclaimed cellist Leland Phillip Ko and 15-year-old Emerging Artist Serena Li.
Registration is open and will close on October 2. Tickets are free but registration is required for this event.
About the Artists
Cellist Leland Philip Ko (b. 1998) is the kind of person who is always asking “why” — American-born but of Chinese-Canadian descent, schooled at both university and conservatory, and extremely thorough in any number of activities ranging from competitive tennis and distance-running to home-baking and origami, he wants to find the similarities between seemingly disparate things, and in doing so hopefully find something human in everything. Above all, Leland does his best to remember advice once given to him that music is about life, not the other way around.
Nicknamed “the storyteller” and “a daring prince” by the media during his time at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, and described as “one of those artists who defy analysis, because words simply cannot describe the powerful emotions they evoke” (RTBF), Leland is a first prize winner of the Walter W. Naumburg International Cello Competition, an Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, and a third prize winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition.
Highlights for Leland’s 2026-2027 season include concerto appearances at home with the Kendall Square Orchestra and the Apollo Ensemble of Boston, a recital at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, and chamber music at Shriver Hall in Baltimore, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Newport Classical Festival, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and Wigmore Hall in London. Past engagements have included a sold out debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, performances at Merkin Hall at the Kaufman Music Center, Boston’s Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall, and concerto appearances with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the Brussels Philharmonic, the Orchestre Symphonique de Sherbrooke, the DuPage Symphony, the Roswell Symphony Orchestra, and the Hudson Valley Philharmonic.
Despite growing up a part of Boston’s strong youth orchestra culture, Leland feels that chamber music is central to his being, having had formative years at Yellowbarn, Ravinia's Steans Music Institute, Four Seasons Chamber Music Workshop, and the Perlman Music Program’s Summer Music School and its Chamber Music Workshop. Leland’s love for chamber music has also led him to be a former Artist in Residence of New York Piano Society (NYPS), and former Music Director of Opus 21, a student-run chamber music collective at Princeton. He is the cellist of Trio Rai, the OAK Trio, the Phaidros Quartet, and also a frequent member of the International Sejong Soloists.
Leland was a long-time student of Kirsten Peltz, Ronald Lowry, and Paul Katz before attending Princeton University, where he graduated with an A.B. in German Literature. He went on to complete an M.M. at The Juilliard School under the teaching of Minhye Clara Kim, Timothy Eddy, and Natasha Brofsky, and then earned an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory under guidance of Laurence Lesser, Yeesun Kim, and Donald Weilerstein. Leland performs on a cello by Pietro Guarneri of Venice, c. 1728-30, and a bow by Dominique Peccatte, both of which are on generous loan to him from Canimex Inc. He resides in Boston, with his 14-year-old cat, Ham.
Serena Li, age 15, is a tenth grader from Scarsdale, New York. She currently studies at Juilliard Pre-College under the tutelage of Clara Minhye Kim. Serena began learning cello at the age of five with Maxine Neuman at Hoff Barthelson Music School and was accepted into the Honors Program at the age of nine. For the past few years, she has been actively participating in various chamber ensembles and orchestras at Hoff Barthelson, the New York Youth Symphony’s Chamber Music Program and Juilliard Pre-College.
Serena has won many awards in cello including the NLPA Virtuosi Recital Competition, the Enkor International Competition, and the CAI Concerto Competition. She performed as a soloist three years in a row with the Symphony of Westchester as one of the prize winners of their Young Artists’ Competition. Serena attended Heifetz International Music Institute for three summers and during the summer of 2025, she studied with Hans Jørgen Jensen at Meadowmount. Outside of music, Serena is passionate about art and math and enjoys playing tennis.
About the Program
This wonderful (and unique!) concert is the kind of thing one could only get with two cellists in a room together at once — from the elegance and nonchalance of a Geminiani Sonata from hundreds of years ago, to the gripping intensity and shock of Penderecki’s music in a piece to which he kept adding movements for almost 20 years, to the peace and memory encoded in an arrangement of a piece by bluegrass fiddler Mark O’Connor, and finally to a suite which captures folk instruments and folk songs from many different provinces in East Asia, this program is a chance to tour through many parts of the world, many times in history, and many sides of the human experience and human emotion.
FRANCESCO GEMINIANI (1687-1762) — Cello Sonata in C major, H. 105, Op. 5 No. 3 (1746) [14’]
Andante
Allegro
Affettuoso
Allegro
Serena Li & Leland Ko, cellos
KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI (1933-2020) — “Preludio,” from the Suite/Divertimento for Solo Cello (1994-2013) [4’]
Serena Li, cello
MARK O’CONNOR (1961- ) — Appalachia Waltz (2003) (arr. solo cello) [4’]
Leland Ko, cello
BRIGHT SHENG 盛宗亮 (1955- ) — Seven Tunes Heard in China (for solo cello) (1995) [25’]
I. Seasons (Qinghai)
II. Guessing Song (Yunnan)
III. The Little Cabbage (Hebei)
IV. The Drunken Fisherman
V. Diu Diu Dong (Taiwan)
VI. Pastoral Ballade (Mongolia)
VII. Tibetan Dance
Leland Ko, cello