American cellist Alisa Weilerstein has won increasing recognition and critical acclaim for performances that combine impassioned musicianship with her natural virtuosity. She was the 2000 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and was selected for two prestigious young artists programs during the 2000-2001 season: the European Concert Organization (ECHO) “Rising Starsâ€? recital series and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society Two.

Ms. Weilerstein has performed with the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Dallas, Honolulu, Baltimore, Saint Louis, San Francisco, National, and Houston symphonies. In 2002,
Ms. Weilerstein took the stage at the New York Philharmonic’s “Concerts in the Parksâ€? series.

As part of the ECHO series in 2000-2001, Ms. Weilerstein gave recitals at seven celebrated concert halls in Europe: Symphony Hall in Birmingham, Wigmore Hall in London, Athens Concert Hall, the Cologne Philharmonie, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

Born in 1982, Alisa Weilerstein began playing the cello at age 4 and performed her first public concert six months later. She often plays with her parents, Donald and Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, as the Weilerstein Trio. She made her Cleveland Orchestra debut in October of 1995, at age 13, playing Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations. She made an acclaimed Carnegie Hall debut with the New York Youth Symphony in March 1997.

Weilerstein is a graduate of the Young Artist Program at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Richard Weiss. In May 2004, she graduated from Columbia University in New York.

http://www.alisaweilerstein.com/

photo: J. Henry Fair