Aaron Wolff

Biography supplied for the 2024 competition.

Described by the Chicago Tribune as “a musician of quicksilver brilliance,” Aaron Wolff is a New York City-based cellist and performer active in solo, collaborative, and cross-disciplinary capacities. Aaron gave his Carnegie Hall debut in Weill Recital Hall as the winner of the 2023 Leo B. Ruiz Memorial recital. This fall, he will make his Wigmore Hall debut with Prussia Cove on Tour, performing music by Britten, Purcell and Adès.

As a high school student of Natasha Brofsky, Aaron won First Prize in the Boston Symphony Concerto Competition, and as a college student of Darrett Adkins was winner of the Oberlin Concerto Competition. He has also been a prizewinner at the Schadt, Barbash and Cleveland Cello Society Competitions. Equally at home in chamber music, he has collaborated with the eighth blackbird, A Far Cry, The Argus Quartet and the Boston Trio, and has spent return summers at Yellow Barn, the Perlman Music Program, and Lucerne Festival Academy.

Aaron has also found creative outlets in acting – most notably in a lead role in the Coen brothers’ film A Serious Man – and in arranging and writing about music: he has provided string arrangements for Comedy Central’s Broad City and covered New York’s new music scene for I Care If You Listen.

Aaron received a B.A. in comparative literature and B.M. in cello performance from Oberlin College & Conservatory. He then completed Master’s degree at Juilliard, where he was a Kovner Fellow under Joel Krosnick, and an Artist Diploma under Tim Eddy and Fred Sherry. He is now pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts at CUNY: The Graduate Center, studying with violinist Mark Steinberg of the Brentano Quartet. Aaron plays a cello by Thomas Kennedy, made in London in 1813.