Luna van Leeuwen

The Dutch violinist Luna van Leeuwen has been praised for her remarkable expressive power from a young age. At the Royal Concertgebouw Competition, jury chairman Jan Willem de Vriend praised her “poetic and highly convincing playing,” and upon winning the National Final of the Princess Christina Competition, Francis van Broekhuizen lauded her “gift for drawing in the audience, as if she tells a story through the music and... maintains the tension until the very last note.” Following her concert at the Delft Chamber Music Festival, Liza Ferschtman said, “She has that great talent for playing for people.”

From the age of 14, Luna has performed as a soloist with various orchestras including the Residentie Orkest and the Real Filharmonía de Galicia in Santiago, and she has given notable concerts. For example, she was invited to open the Concertgebouw's Shareholders Concert in the Main Hall. She won first prizes at national and international competitions such as the Wettbewerb für junge Geiger in Düsseldorf and the Dutch Violin Competition in the youngest age category. However, she chose to develop herself broadly. Alongside earning her academic diploma (Gymnasium), she invested in her love for chamber music and symphonic repertoire. As concertmaster of the National Youth Orchestra of the Netherlands, she received rave reviews for her interpretation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. “The undisputed highlight was the magnificent solo musings of concertmaster Luna van Leeuwen.” (NRC Handelsblad). She contributed to the “All of Bach” project by the Netherlands Bach Society and performed contemporary repertoire at festivals such as the Aurora Festival and the Grachtenfestival.

Luna received her training from Koosje van Haeringen in the Young Talent Class at the Royal Conservatory, and later studied with Veselina Manikova and Stephan Picard at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. Luna is committed to climate action as the initiator and organizer, together with her younger sister Donna (cello), of a national Children’s Climate Concert Day, where children and young people use music to draw positive attention to climate issues. The first edition will take place in September 2026 in Utrecht.

Luna plays on a Johannes Cuypers violin from 1801 and lives in Berlin.