Introduction
The Road to Splendor...
The Early years: 1949-1957...
The Boston Years: 1957-1966...
The Stanford Years: 1967-1969...
Back to Harvard: 1970...
Darius Milhaud's Stanford Serenade [Title page | page 1 | page 2]
UCLA: 1971 to the Present...
The Exclusive Club...

On January 27, 1975 there appeared an article in the Los Angeles Times which began as follows:

A Harbor General Hospital oral surgeon has invented a device which serves as an alternative to solid bone grafting or metal for reconstructing jaws and other facial structures damaged by accidents, birth defects or other causes.

The device, invented by Dr. Donald L. Leake, Professor of Oral Surgery at UCLA and Dental Director and Chief of Oral Surgery at Harbor General, eliminates a great number of surgical problems and reduces cost, according to Leake.

This is the same Donald Leake who in June of 1956 received the Premier Prix avec Distinction in Oboe and Premier Prix avec la Plus Grande Distinction in Chamber Music from the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Brussels and of whom one reviewer had to say:

Donald Leake est un jeune instrumentaliste qui, grâce à une bourse d'études, est venu parfaire ses études au Conservatoire de Bruxelles, où il vient de remporter de brilliants résultats dans ses classes de hautbois et de la musique de chambre. Au long de se programme d'une captivante diversité, il a pu dormer la mesure de son très bon talent. Servi par un virtuosité assurée et souple, par une sonorité stable et de belle quanité, un phrasé extrêmement expressif et chantant, des nuances de choix, une nature essentiellement musicale et compréhensive, il donna vie et intérêt aux oeuvres interprétées.

One is tempted to say: "How can this be?" or "Isn't one of those careers, surgeon or oboist, enough for one man's lifetime?"

Basically, those are the questions we set out to have answered by Don Leake himself when we visited him in his luxurious residence in Rolling Hills, California. Our original impetus though, was his letter to the editor which appeared in The Double Reed of Fall 1985:

"Dear Dan: I too studied oboe with Henri de Busscher. In the article written by the Lehrers [on Sahl Spano], his name was consistently misspelled [as de Buescher]. Would you please set the record straight?

We replied with a letter to Don explaining that we had simply taken Philip Bate's first spelling of the name as used in his book, The Oboe. Don answered us with an invitation to visit him and his wife in Rolling Hills (near Los Angeles) during our winter solstice trek to the San Fernando Valley where we would be vacationing at the home of Nancy's parents.

The Road to Splendor...

We set out from North Hollywood in the Valley early one evening, trying to avoid the unbelievable traffic on the freeways by heading south on Sepulveda. Needless to say, there is no easy way to get across L.A. in a car! But about an hour into our drive, we found ourselves well south of the city and heading into an area of refineries known as Torrance. After driving for still quite some distance on this flat plane, we suddenly began to climb into mountainous terrain. Gone was the glare of streetlights as the road narrowed to two lanes.

Entering Don's street, one is greeted by a small guardhouse manned by security police. A call by the man on duty to Don, assured him that we, in fact, were expected. (Whew, a great relief to us!) As we proceeded down a long winding street we noticed large, magnificent estates sprawling out on either side of the road. In a word, Beverly Hills could not touch this!

Driving in to Don's place, I must say it was all we expected. Maxwell, his thoroughbred Dalmatian dog greeted us in front of a huge ranch-style home and, to be sure, Don's Mercedes sat out front in all its splendor!

Entering this palatial residence we were greeted by Don and his vivacious wife, Rosemary, who shares Don's medical background as she is a noted pediatrician. Spread out before us was a magnificent concert hall with a small bar at one end. Actually this room was also meant to serve as a dance floor in the days when a member of the Max Factor family held court. To our delight, Don demonstrated how the floor could be raised to reveal his oval swimming pool!

Next, drinks were served in an adjoining area that served as a living room and, as might be expected, the Lehrers wanted to know just how all this gracious living came about. After all, oboists normally do not live in such glorious surroundings: even Ralph Gomberg's fabulous summer residence at Tanglewood was no match for this!

So, in this regal setting, Don and Rosemary began to spin the tale of two struggling medical students at Harvard University, one of whom had returned just a few years earlier from a Fulbright in oboe at the Brussels Conservatoire.

The Early years: 1949-1957

In the summer of 1949, Don Leake, the gifted student of the oboist Cecil Tozier, played the Carmel Bach Festival for the first time. He had just graduated from high school and was due to enter the University of Southern California to study under the renowned oboist, Henri de Busscher.

The following summer, Don was playing principal oboe at Carmel and was heard to good advantage in the oboe obbliggati of several Bach arias. Thus began his intimate connection with the music of Bach and chamber music, the two great forces which, in conjunction with de Busscher, were to shape his entire career as a performing artist.

In his sophomore year at USC, Don won first prize in the Colernan Chamber Music Auditions, a feat which he was to repeat the following year! His connection with Carmel continued all through college from which he graduated in spring of 1953 with an A.B.

The years immediately following graduation were simply amazing for it was during that time that Don immersed himself in intense playing. Three recordings with Robert Craft for Columbia, including the famous disc of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Zeitmasse, Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31, and Music of Heinrich Schutz, were milestones at the time. Don was also rehearsing and playing concerts during that period with the Los Angeles Woodwinds and the Monday Evening Concert Series, and in summer he was busy with the San Diego Summer Symphony and the Ojai Festival.

It was also in those years that 20th Century Fox was using a large oboe section, and Don well remembers playing 5th Oboe in The Robe.

Other movie soundtracks on which he participated include There's No Business Like Show Business. During the 1954-55 season he went on tour with the Robert Shaw Chorale playing a total of 94 concerts with that famed group!

It was in the following season, 1955-56 that Don received a Fulbright to study the oboe and chamber music at the Conservatoire Royale de Musique in Brussels. His oboe teacher there was Florimand de Langhe who faintly remembered that a young Henri de Busscher was once a student in Brussels.

Returning to USC in the fall of 1956, Don began work on his M.A. in music history. He received the degree in 1957 and in that year also took part in the Anchorage Music Festival. For that festival, William Kraft composed his Piece for Oboe and Piano for Don to play with John Wustman, but the first performance did not actually take place until several years later in Boston.

The Boston Years: 1957-1966...

In the fall of 1957 Don decided to enroll at Harvard to pursue a degree in dentistry, actually oral surgery. What a fantastic move this was to be for the man who had spent so many fruitful years as a musician! The same Donald Leake who spent a year rehearsing the Zeitmasse with Robert Craft at the Stravinsky residence in Beverly Hills, was now leaving that world of fabulous excitement for the world of the physician.

But Don was not an ordinary dental student: he kept busy at oboe playing throughout the Boston years. Many a concert at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was of chamber music organized by Don. His expertise in the music of Bach was often to be heard during his association with the Cantata Singers.

In 1962, Don graduated from Harvard with the degree D.M.D. and went to the Massachusetts General Hospital to train in oral and maxillofacial surgery. Eventually he moved back to the west coast to enroll in the M.D. program at Stanford. He took with him his wife, Rosemary, whom he had met at Harvard. She was a pediatrician and for the next few years of Don's medical school training would be the chief breadwinner!

The Stanford Years: 1967-1969...

Again, the challenge of earning yet another degree, this time the M.D. from Stanford University, was filled with music making to console the weary student. Don's performances with the Stanford Symphony Orchestra under Sandor Salgo are legendary. Imagine the influence of such an artist upon that student orchestra! In 1969, Don received the M.D. and gave his farewell performance at Stanford, playing the Vaughan Williams Oboe Concerto.

Back to Harvard: 1970...

During the year of 1970 when Don was employed at Harvard Medical School as an oral surgeon, a major event occurred in the oboe world: Darius Milhaud composed his Stanford Serenade [Title page | page 1 | page 2] for Solo Oboe and Eleven Instruments and dedicated it to Donald Leake (who had commissioned it) and to Sandor Salgo! Don returned to Stanford to play the premiere in May. The reviewers for the various newspapers in the Stanford area were very surprised, for here was a medical doctor who was at the same time a major artist on, of all instruments, the oboe:

The Boston surgeon brought such a wealth of technique and feeling into his oboe solos that the M.D. on his university diploma, we would guess, could well stand for Musician in Disguise. Exquisite all the way.

-Paul Hertelendy: Oakland Tribune

Leake came through with some marvelous playing. He displayed a beautiful, clear tone and an ability to handle the difficult passagework with ease and assurance. His work in the high register was superb.

-Paul Emerson: Palo Alto Times

UCLA: 1971 to the Present...

Since 1971, Don Leake has been a Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in the UCLA Schools of Medicine and Dentistry. In addition, he is the Director of the UCLA Dental Research Institute and Chief or Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

In addition to the above, Don is still one of us, still an oboist and musician. He returned to Stanford in 1971 and again in 1972 as a guest soloist in the Milhaud Serenade and Vaughan Williams Concerto respectively. Also, in 1972 he was back at the Carmel Bach Festival as a soloist. He did a woodwind workshop at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa in the summer of the same year at the invitation of James Luke, the distinguished clarinetist.

The following year, 1973, Don invented the alloplastic tray used in bone surgery of the face and was granted a patent for this brilliant concept in 1975. In January 1975, the L.A. papers were filled with news of his invention:

The tray itself resembles the lower jawbone. Made of Dacron mesh cloth with polyether urethane, it is firm enough to keep its shape but flexible enough to contour at the operating table. With the alloplastic tray, jawbones can be restored to normal dimensions after being worn or partially destroyed by accident, birth defects, surgery or disease. An estimated 5000 persons yearly may be helped by the tray.

Sold under the name OsteoMeshTM, the clinical applications of the tray now include most of the facial skeleton and especially the restoration of large defects of the skull. As with most university inventors, Don has assigned the patent rights to the parent institution. In this case it is the Research and Education Institute at the Harbor- UCLA Medical Center.

In the years 1976, 1981, and 1984 there followed three concerti composed especially for Don to display his magnificent artistry as an oboist:

Eugene Zador Concerto for Orchestra
Alice Parker Double Concerto for Oboe and Viola
Mark Volkert Oboe Concerto

The Zador Concerto was given its premiere at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center in Los Angeles with the Los Angeles Doctors Orchestra. Alice Parker's work was first heard at Chapman College in Orange, California with Tom Hall joining Don Leake as co-soloist. The Volkert has yet to be performed.

In the meantime, Don and Rosemary have had time to bring up three gifted children. Rosemary, who is associate chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at UCLA was named Woman of Science for 1985 at UCLA.

With the advent of three dimensional CT scans and CAD/CAM technology (computer assisted design and manufacturing), bony contour defects of the facial bones and skull can be reconstructed with anatomic precision using combinations of bone and biomaterials. Therefore, Don is busy traveling all over the world to give lectures and consult on the application of these new technologies in reconstructive surgery. And he takes his oboe along just in case there is the opportunity to make music with fellow surgeons. At a recent symposium in Leipzig, Don played with the Leipziger Kammer Soloisten who, in fact, are members of the Gewandhaus Orchestra!

The Exclusive Club...

After our visit with Don and Rosemary, and as we were driving back to the San Fernando Valley, we were reminded of words our great teacher, Ralph Gomberg, had spoken to us just a few summers ago:

You know Nancy and Charlie, you two belong to an exclusive club: you are oboists. And as oboists you will be privileged to experience a part of life of whose existence most people will never be aware!

To be sure, it was this privilege that gave us the opportunity to visit with the Leakes. And this very privilege has given Donald Leake his special connection with the music of Bach, which the majority of his fellow surgeons visiting Leipzig with him would neither have nor understand.

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