Alisa Weilerstein

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alisa Weilerstein (1982– ) is an American cellist. She started playing the cello at age four and promptly showed her talent for the instrument performing her first public concert six months later. She made her debut at age 13 with the Cleveland Orchestra playing Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme. As a soloist she has performed with a number of other major orchestras and in musically significant venues on four continents. She also is active in chamber music and performs with her parents, violinist Donald Weilerstein and pianist Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, as the Weilerstein Trio, currently the trio in residence at the New England Conservatory in Boston. She has also worked extensively with the Philadelphia composer, Joseph Hallman. In March 2008, she will premiere a new Cello Concerto of his in St. Petersburg, Russia with the St. Petersburg Chamber Orchestra.

Weilerstein has received a number of honors. In 2000-2001 she won an Avery Fisher Career Grant and was selected to play in the ECHO "Rising Stars" program and Chamber Music Society II, the young artists' program of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2006 she was awarded the Leonard Bernstein Prize at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.

In 2004 she graduated from Columbia University in New York City with a BA in Russian history.

[edit] Discography

Alisa Weilerstein & Vivian Hornik Weilerstein: Works for Cello and Piano (recording in the EMI Classics "Debut" Series focusing on artists on the brink of major international careers) (EMI 5 73498 2)
The Weilerstein Trio, with Donald Weilerstein (violin), Alisa Weilerstein (cello) and Vivian Hornik Weilerstein (piano): Dvorak Trios (recording from Koch International Classics) (Koch B000CC4W14)