Elena Ariza

Biography supplied for the 2024 competition.

Cellist Elena Ariza is rapidly establishing herself as one of today’s most creative and community-driven cellists. She was recently featured on Yo-Yo Ma’s groundbreaking Music Art Life project, exploring human connection through the Bach Cello Suites. An avid chamber musician, she has performed with luminaries such as Itzhak Perlman, Steve Tenenbom, Vivian Weilerstein, the Cassatt Quartet, and members of the Brentano Quartet. She has had the privilege of performing for esteemed musicians such as Colin Carr, David Finckel, Clive Greensmith, Frans Helmerson, Gary Hoffman, and Marcy Rosen.
A fierce advocate for the music of today, Ariza has worked with and showcased compositions by Pulitzer Prizewinner Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, commissioned and premiered Anne Qian Wang’s The Cat That Lived a Million Lives, and premiered Hiroya Miura’s Lustral Shades, collaborating with esteemed musicians of the Japanese tradition. Passionate about community activism, she has organized fundraiser concerts for the 2011 Japanese tsunami, the 2021 Haitian earthquake, and for those affected by the Russian war in Ukraine.
Based in New York City, Ariza is a proud recipient of the C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellowship at the Juilliard School. She previously received her Artist Diploma at Juilliard and her Bachelor of Arts at Columbia University majoring in computer science, as part of the Columbia-Juilliard Exchange Program. Ariza is currently studying under the tutelage of Joel Krosnick and Astrid Schween, for whom she serves as Teaching Assistant. Her former teachers and mentors include Richard Aaron, Ronald Leonard, Sieun Lin, and Eric Sung.