Ana Souza Leban is a Parnassus scholar, studying for a Master of Performance Oboe at the Royal College of Music, London (RCM). She is currently in a class of Fabien Thouand and Gareth Hulse for Oboe and Jane Marshall for Cor Anglais. She has been playing this year with RCM Symphony Orchestra and had a successful project with Reed Quartet. She has also been working with Sparks, doing family creative workshops. Outside the college she performed with Outcry Ensemble. Ana's music education started in Slovenia, where she first began to play Piano and after six years started with Oboe as well. She started her studies at the Ljubljana Academy of Music, focusing first on the Music Theory Education and later on Music Arts, Oboe, under professor Božo Rogelja. In 2014, she graduated in both studies. During her official education, she attended masterclasses with various well-known oboists, such as Guy Porat, Clara Dent and German Diaz Blanco. Futhermore she was improving her knowledge of Oboe under teacher Emma Davislim Black. In addition to studying, Ana worked at the Tolmin School of Music for eight years, where she taught Oboe and Piano and was an Accompanist. She was also a Principal Oboist in the NOVA Philharmonic Orchestra and was regulary performing with slovenian and italian orchestras. She played with world-renowned conductors, such as Riccardo Muti, George Pehlivanien, Mark Heron, Ivan Meylemans and Douglas Bostock. Ana is a member of Neofonia Ensemble, which is performing contemporary music. In the future she would like to become an orchestral musician and a part-time teacher and chamber musician. She is really grateful to be a Parnassus scholar at RCM and supported by Ministry of Culture, Slovenia.
Ana has a beautiful innate musicality, a wonderful sense of sound and phrasing and is both diligent and highly disciplined.
