London’s Cobbett Medal Announces 2024 Winner

Leon Bosch is the first double bass player and first Black musician to win the prestigious award

London’s Worshipful Company of Musicians has awarded its 2024 William Willson Cobbett Medal to the British virtuoso Leon Bosch for his services to chamber music. He is the first double bass player and Black musician to win the annual medal since it was inaugurated 1924.  

Bosch is the artistic director of the mixed instrument ensemble I Musicanti, and founder of the Ubuntu Ensemble, which comprises fellow South Africa-born musicians now based in the UK. 

Additionally, he served as principal double bass of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields ensemble from 1995 until 2014, 

Throughout his career, he has performed with John Thwaites, Sung-Suk Kang, and his current duo partner, Rebeca Omordia. Among his many duo recordings include surveys of British, South African, Russian, and Hungarian double bass music, and portraits of Giovanni Bottesini, Allan Stephenson, and the Catalan virtuosos, Pedro Valls and Josep Cervera. More collaborators have included the Lindsay, Brodsky, and Belcea string quartets.

Born in Cape Town in 1961, Bosch began studying the double bass at the University of Cape Town. He later moved to the UK to study at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), and made his solo debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Antony Beaumont in 1984.

“I am both honored 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,” he said in an RNCM press release. “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.”

Previous winners of the Corbett Medal have included Malcolm Singer, Susan Tomes, Richard Ireland, Trevor Pinnock, Steven Isserlis, Kenneth Sillito, William Bennett, John Gilhooly, Emma Johnson, and Corina Belcea.