Alisa Weilerstein

A champion of contemporary music, Weilerstein has worked extensively with composers Osvaldo Golijov and Lera Auerbach, as well as with Philadelphia composer Joseph Hallman. She performed the New York premiere of Golijov's Cello Concerto "Azul" at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, the world premiere of Auerbach's 24 Preludes for Cello and Piano at the Caramoor International Music Festival, Auerbach's transcription of Shostakovich Op. 34 for Cello and Piano at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, and Hallman's Cello Concerto with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic 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 2011 she received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant". In 2004 she graduated from Columbia University in New York City with a BA in Russian history. She plays a 1790 William Forster Cello.