Julliard Mississauga musician returns to play with Toronto Symphony Orchestra

An exceptional teenage talent from Mississauga who couldn’t attend one of the most prestigious schools in the world because of financial obstacles until the community stepped into help is coming back home to show off his skills.

Musician William Leathers was first admitted to Julliard School in 2020, but he wasn’t able to enroll because of the high tuition fees.

That is until the Mississauga community rallied around the trumpet musician.

“I’m very grateful to have spent the past five years at the Julliard’s Schools. The first two taken care of very generously by people and Canadians all over the world who donated to the GoFundMe campaign started by a good family friend of mine, Andray Domise and the scholarship that came after that,” Leathers told CityNews.

Now, he’s a sought-after talent. Leathers was invited to be the principal trumpet with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and still found time to complete his accelerated Masters degree this past May.

“The most fun about that was during my graduation week. We happened to be playing a Straus program. So essentially, I played a Thursday night concert and then I flew to New York graduated and went through the whole ceremony, took one photo with my parents then left to get back to the airport to get to a show at 8 p.m. at night,” shared Leathers about a whirlwind weekend. “I had to play a Saturday night show that my parents were able to attend which was really great.”

Leathers said it was a lot of work balancing everything but with lots of support through the school, and his family and friends he was able to get through it.

He has had the honour of playing with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) recently and is coming home for some of the biggest shows of his life, again, in front of a hometown crowd at the TSO

“Essentially a few people from the Toronto Symphony heard about me and they heard I was a Toronto Youth Symphony alum. I feel truly grateful to play in the orchestra that I grew up watching,” said Leathers.

Leathers said that he is truly grateful for the community support to help him make it through his first two years financially and plans on starting his own foundation to help make sure other youth have the funds to go to their dream school.