About Leslie

Leslie Ashworth is a Canadian violinist and violist praised for her versatility and imaginative artistry as a performer, educator, and composer. She was a live competitor in the 2025 Tokyo International Viola Competition and a quarter finalist in the 2024 Primrose International Viola Competition. Named one of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s 2021 “Hot 30 Under 30” Classical Musicians, she is also a 2022 prize winner of the Stepping Stone International Competition.

Leslie has performed in venues including Carnegie Hall (New York), Koerner Hall (Toronto), and at festivals such as the Perlman Music Program’s Chamber Music Workshop, Thy Chamber Music Festival (Denmark), European American Musical Alliance Quartet Residency (Paris), Music Academy of the West, and the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance with Barbara Hannigan. She regularly performs as a substitute musician in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. She has also collaborated in chamber music performances with the Takács String Quartet and members of the New York Philharmonic. 

Currently pursuing her Doctor of Musical Arts under Misha Amory and Cynthia Phelps at The Juilliard School, Leslie was awarded Juilliard’s Spring 2025 George J. Jakab Global Enrichment Grant to pursue research as part of her doctoral studies. She previously earned her Master of Music in Viola at Juilliard as a Kovner Fellow, her MM in Violin at Rice University with Paul Kantor, and her Bachelor of Music in Violin at The Glenn Gould School under Paul Kantor and Barry Shiffman. Leslie is a faculty member in Juilliard’s College, Pre-College, and Extension Divisions, where she teaches Ear Training and Fundamentals of Violin.

A dedicated advocate for community engagement, Leslie is the founder of Suite Melody Care, a non-profit organization bringing live music to hospital patients and seniors across Canada and the U.S., for which she received the Ontario Lieutenant Governor’s Community Volunteer Award. She has served as a teaching artist at Celia Cruz Summer Strings in the Bronx and taught weekly music appreciation classes in NYC public elementary schools as a Morse Teaching Artist (2021–2025). As a composer, she won First Prize in the 2022 Sudbury Youth Orchestra’s Young Women Composers’ Competition, and has studied composition with Dr. Philip Lasser at Juilliard as a composition for non-major student. She currently serves on the Youth Advisory Council of the American Viola Society (2021–present).

Leslie performs on a 1696 Albani violin, generously on loan from a private benefactor, and an 1854 Joseph Rocca viola on loan from Juilliard. Her studies have been supported by the Sylva Gelber Music Foundation (2022–24).
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