Orchestra of St. Luke’s
& Alisa Weilerstein

Alisa Weilerstein is one of the foremost cellists of our time. Known for her consummate artistry, emotional investment and rare interpretive depth, she was recognized with a MacArthur “genius grant” Fellowship in 2011. Today her career is truly global in scope, taking her to the most prestigious international venues for solo recitals, chamber concerts and concerto collaborations with all the preeminent conductors and orchestras worldwide. “Weilerstein is a throwback to an earlier age of classical performers: not content merely to serve as a vessel for the composer’s wishes, she inhabits a piece fully and turns it to her own ends,” marvels The New York Times. “Weilerstein’s cello is her id. She doesn’t give the impression that making music involves will at all. She and the cello seem simply to be one and the same,” agrees The Los Angeles Times. As the U.K.’s Telegraph put it, “Weilerstein is truly a phenomenon.” 

With her multi-season new project, FRAGMENTS, Weilerstein aims to rethink the concert experience and broaden the tent for classical music. A multisensory production for solo cello, the six-chapter series sees her weave together the 36 movements of Bach’s solo cello suites with 27 new commissions. After premiering the first two chapters in Toronto in early 2023, with subsequent performances at New York’s Carnegie Hall and beyond, she looks forward to touring all six chapters in seasons to come. Weilerstein recently premiered Joan Tower’s new cello concerto, A New Day, at the Colorado Music Festival. The work was co-commissioned with the Detroit Symphony; the Cleveland Orchestra, where Weilerstein performed it last fall; and the National Symphony, where she reprised it in May. An ardent proponent of contemporary music, she has also premiered and championed important new works by composers including Pascal Dusapin, Osvaldo Golijov and Matthias Pintscher. Already an authority on Bach’s music for unaccompanied cello, in spring 2020 Weilerstein released a best-selling recording of his solo suites on the Pentatone label, streamed them in her innovative #36DaysOfBach project, and deconstructed his beloved G-major prelude in a Vox.com video, viewed more than two million times. Her discography also includes chart-topping albums and the winner of BBC Music’s Recording of the Year award, while other career milestones include a performance at the White House for President and Mrs. Obama. 

Diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at nine years old, Weilerstein is a staunch advocate for the T1D community. She lives with her husband, Venezuelan conductor Rafael Payare, and their two young children. 

Weilerstein is a 1999 alumna of Cararmoor’s Evnin Rising Stars mentoring program. 

To learn more about Alisa Weilerstein, please visit her website (https://alisaweilerstein.com). 

Winner of the 2018 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award by the U.S Solti Foundation, Berlin-based American conductor Roderick Cox has been praised as a conductor who is “paving the way” (NBC News) and recognized as a “trailblazer…a conductor who will be amongst the vanguard” (Minnesota StarTribune).  

Forthcoming highlights include debuts with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Staatskapelle Dresden, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Barcelona Symphony, while he returns to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, and Philharmonia Orchestra. 

Recent highlights include his debuts with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Malmo Symphony, Lahti Symphony, Boston Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, New World Symphony, and Orchestre de Paris. He has also returned to Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, and Aspen Music Festival Chamber Orchestra. 

In the theater, Cox has recently made important debuts at the Houston Grand Opera (Pêcheurs de Perles) and San Francisco Opera (Il barbiere di Siviglia), as well as recording Jeanine Tesori’s Blue with the Washington National Opera. Last season he returned to the Opéra national de Montpellier for Rigoletto, where he is also developing a relationship on the symphonic platform. 

With a passion for education and diversity and inclusion in the arts, Cox started the Roderick Cox Music Initiative (RCMI) in 2019, a project that provides scholarships for young musicians from historically marginalized communities, allowing them to pay for instruments, music lessons, and summer camps. Cox and his new initiative will be featured in an upcoming documentary called Conducting Life. 

Born in Macon, Georgia, Cox attended the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University, and then later attended Northwestern University graduating with a Master degree in 2011. He was awarded the Robert J. Harth Conducting Prize from the Aspen Music Festival in 2013 and has held fellowships with the Chicago Sinfonietta as part of their Project Inclusion program and at the Chautauqua Music Festival, where he was a David Effron Conducting Fellow. In 2016, Cox was appointed as Associate Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, under Osmo Vänskä, for three seasons, having previously served as assistant conductor for a year. 

To learn more about Roderick Cox, please visit his website (https://roderickcox.com).