Violinist, violist, composer,
improviser, performer and educator
Leonor grew up in Venezuela where she was classically trained and played in orchestras since age 6. Her teachers being Ivan Perez and Virginie Roibilliard among others at the Emil Friedman conservatory and Mozarteum de Caracas.
While in her home country, she was part of the acclaimed chamber music group Virtuosi de Caracas and was a member of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Venezuela, all the while honing her skills in jazz and improvised music. As a freelance musician she was very active in the local music scene performing with many pop, rock, and latin groups as well as doing recording session work.
In 2007, Leonor was accepted to do her Master in Music Performance at the Conservatory of Geneva, Switzerland, where she studied with Margarita Piguet-Karafilova and graduated in 2010. After graduation she decided to pursue her passion for jazz and moved to NY where she completed her Master’s Degree in Jazz Performance at Queens College in 2013. Her teachers were: Antonio Hart, David Berkman, Christian Howes and Mark Feldman.
Currently, Leonor performs around New York City in ensembles that are dedicated to jazz, avant garde, latin and classical music. Some collaborations and performances include Willie Colon’s band, Akua Dixon’s string quartet, Sirius Quartet, Camila Meza and the Nectar Orchestra, Arturo O’Farrill Latin Jazz Orchestra, Maelo Latinoexperimental Project, Karl Berger improvisers orchestra, OKwarteto, Sarah Bernstein’s Veer quartet, among others.
Recent projects are Peach and Tomato, an experimental strings duo with violinist Sana Nagano that has put out their debut album “The Ultimate Pairing” on September 2019, her solo debut album “Imaga Mondo” along with musicians Juanma Trujillo, Christof Knoche and Juan Pablo Carletti which came out in 2017 -and so far has been very well received by critiques like Bruce Gallanter (Downtown Music Gallery) and Troy Dostert (All about Jazz)-, CHAMA, an avant-rock project with a first record released on 2016 and three singles on 2020, as well as various performances with the Solar String Quartet, Veer Quartet and OKwarteto, playing respectively jazz, original new music and Brazilian music. She’s currently working on the release of Imaga Mondo Vol. II, a second album with Peach and Tomato, a new release with CHAMA and a duo record with her husband and guitarist/composer Juanma Trujillo.
Leonor has been teaching in NYC since 2010 students of all ages, mostly using the O’Connor method, for which she’s a certified teacher and for which she's become part of the faculty for their summer camp in NYC and Charlotte NC since 2016, and is a REMIC Microphone Artist since 2019.
Photo by Kenneth Jimenez. Click here => Kenneth's work