About

Based in New York City, Leo Gevisser (b. 2002) is a composer and performer who received his Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from the Juilliard School with academic honors in May 2024 under the mentorship of Jerome Lowenthal. He is currently an M.F.A. candidate in the Sound Arts program at Columbia University.

In 2024, Leo was awarded the 2nd Prize Caisse de Dépôts in the 16th Concours International de Piano d’Orléans—along with being awarded the Public Prize, Elliott Carter Prize, and the month-long Henri Dutilleux-Geneniève Joy Residency in France. Subsequently, he has been invited to perform as a soloist in contemporary music festivals and programmes across France and Italy.

Leo is a Young Steinway Artist.

Leo is the recipient of the First Prize at the Miesczysław Munz Scholarship Competition at The Juilliard School. In New York, he has been invited to perform solo recitals as part of the Sparkill Recital Series in New York for the 2022, 2023, and 2024 seasons. He has also been invited to perform in events and venues such as the Yale School of Music’s New Music New Haven series, as well as Harvard University.

Raised in Cape Town, Leo remains deeply connected to South Africa. There, his musical studies progressed under the tutelage of Professors Nina Schumann and Luis Magalhães. From 2022 up until now, he has been invited year after year to tour as a recitalist in cities across South Africa, as well as a soloist with all of South Africa’s major orchestras including the Cape Town, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Johannesburg, and Mzansi Philharmonic Orchestras. He joined the Piano Faculty for the 20th Anniversary of the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival (SICMF) in 2025, where he appeared as a soloist with the SICMF Alumni Orchestra; as well as the faculty of the 2026 Stellenbosch International Piano Symposium, where he was invited to perform a solo recital.

From the start of his musical career, Leo has continuously been involved with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra’s Masidlale grassroots project: an outreach program teaching all orchestral instruments to underprivileged children in the townships around Cape Town. He has donated a portion of his performance fees to Masidlale since he was 13 years old. 

As an active composer and producer, Leo works are constructed with intonation systems as well as spatial sound configurations. He has been invited to premiere compositions, electronic sets, and site-specific/time-specific sonic installations at places such as the Manitoga | Russel Wright Design Center, LittleGig in South Africa, the highSCORE Festival and Residency for Contemporary Composition in Italy, Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and the Juilliard School—including other locations across Europe and the U.S.. His setup includes a Lumatone isomorphic keyboard.