Limelight has today learned of the death of musician and writer Jo St Leon.

Hobart-based, St Leon was a talented violist who was during her music career Lecturer in Viola at the UTAS Conservatorium and Head of Strings at St Michael’s Collegiate School.

Jo St Leon

As well as playing with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Virtuosi Tasmania, she was also a member of Hobart’s Elanée Ensemble, which she founded in 2009 with double bassist Stuart Thomson.

Prior to moving to Hobart in 2006, St Leon also held Principal Viola positions with English National Ballet, Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet and English Touring Opera, and was a member of the London Philharmonic Orchestra for 13 years.

A cancer diagnosis in 2016 led to her early retirement from professional playing and into writing full-time. She wrote concert reviews for Limelight and CutCommon and published The Light in the Darkness: Musings on Living with Cancer.

“My greatest privilege is being a senior and a forest-dweller,” St Leon recently wrote in an article for the online platform Elephant Journal. “It is my time to tend to my soul, water my garden of beliefs, and to know my...