Photo: Leo Yuen
Leon Ko received a Master’s degree in Musical Theatre Writing from New York University. His accolades include a Richard Rodgers Development Award in the US for his musical Heading East, as well as Hong Kong Drama Awards for The Good Person of Szechwan, The Legend of the White Snake, Field of Dreams, The Passage Beyond, Our Immortal Cantata, Sing Out and The Woman in Kenzo. Ko collaborated with Hong Kong legend Jacky Cheung as music director for the Mandarin edition of Cheung’s musical Snow. Wolf. Lake., as well as two of Cheung’s concert tours.
Ko has written scores for a number of film scores, with his music for Perhaps Love winning Best Original Film Score and Film Music at the Golden Horse Awards, the Hong Kong Film Awards, the Asia-Pacific Film Festival and the Golden Bauhinia Awards. His theme song for The Last Tycoon also earned him a Hong Kong Film Award. He also received an ASCAP Screen Music Award for Monster Hunt 2.
Other works include the musical Takeaway for London’s Theatre Royal Stratford East; new music for the Yam Kim Fai and Pak Suet Sin Charitable Foundation Chinese opera productions such as Princess Chang-ping; music for the plays The Liaisons and Tonnochy; Leon collaborated with Yip Wing-sie and Hong Kong Sinfonietta on The Passage Beyond In Concert, The Amazing Filmphony and was Sinfonietta’s Artist Associate from 2018-2019. He was the organiser and music director of The Originals, a concert to celebrate the original musicals of Hong Kong. He was artistic and musical director of Le French May’s Cities of Light in 2022.
