The Cello Guild

A graduate of The Juilliard School and a Fulbright Scholar, cellist Jennifer Kloetzel has concertized throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia as a soloist and chamber musician. A founding member of the San Francisco-based Cypress String Quartet (1996-2016) and QuartetES, Jennifer has toured the globe and performed at such renowned venues as Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, the Chautauqua Institute and the Ravinia Festival, the Lobkowicz Palaces in both Vienna and Prague, as well as prominent colleges and conservatories worldwide. Jennifer is known for her elegant playing and vibrant tone. She is a sought-after recitalist, performing concerts for San Francisco Performances and on WQXR in New York. The Strad magazine raved, “Cellist Jennifer Kloetzel is impressively passionate…” The Cello Museum proclaimed that her “energy, ceaseless intellectual curiosity, and virtuosic command of the instrument unite in exceptional musicianship, making her truly a hero of the cello.” Jennifer has recorded 36 CDs, including the entire cycle of Beethoven Quartets and Brahms Sextets on the Avie label. Most recently, she released “Beethoven: The Conquering Hero,” the complete works for cello and piano (with Robert Koenig), which was chosen as “Recording of the Month” by BBC Music Magazine in March 2022 and stated, “If only more cellists would play like this—and at this level of ceaseless musicianship… Kloetzel’s playing responds unerringly to the shift of creative tone at each stage of the composer’s development.” The review went on to state her playing was “a masterclass in how to engage with the most powerful creative personality music has known.” Gramophone magazine hailed the Beethoven collection for “cello playing that’s notable for its warmth, inward expressiveness… Kloetzel comes across as so utterly natural.” A champion of new music, Jennifer received the Copland Award for engaging living American composers, commissioning and premiering over 50 works, including five concertos written specifically for her. The San Jose Mercury News noted, “Cellist Jennifer Kloetzel shines in premiere” while lauding her as a “terrific soloist… with a robust and earthy sound.” Jennifer recorded Elena Ruehr’s Cello Concerto with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, which was released to critical acclaim in 2014. Lift, the title track of an all-Ruehr disc released on the Avie label, was included on Keith Powers’ “13 Best Classical Music Recordings of 2016.” Jennifer is winner of The Juilliard School’s top award, the “Peter Mennin Prize for Outstanding Leadership and Achievement in Music,” and a Presser Music Award, as well as a Fulbright Grant to England. She was honored with the McGraw-Hill Companies’ “Robert Sherman Award for Music Education and Community Outreach” in recognition of years of outreach work in schools and community centers. She has been featured regularly on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today” as both soloist and chamber musician, and her performances have been broadcast on radio stations worldwide. In 2016, Jennifer was invited to join the faculty at University of California Santa Barbara, where she is Professor of Cello and serves as both Head of the String and Performance Areas. For more information, visit jkcello.com

Erica Lessie is a freelance cellist in the Chicago area, working in a broad range of styles across many facets of the Chicago music scene. Erica has performed on the Oprah Winfrey show with both Whitney Houston and Seal, and has also appeared with Diana Krall, Andrea Bocelli, Peter Cetera, the Four Tops and Johnny Mathis. She is an auxiliary member of the rock band Tributosaurus and co-founder of Cherchez la Femme, a musical ensemble dedicated to presenting the arts expressed by women across the millennium. Ms. Lessie also developed Cellos of Unusual Shape, a solo presentation that explores the diversity of variant cellos. Currently, she teaches at DePaul University Community Music Division, Sherwood Community Music School at Columbia College and Chicago High School for the Arts. She has composed duets for flute/cello and piccolo/toy piano and is creating a collection of short pieces for solo cello. Ms. Lessie works with the Cello Museum as a research contributor and author of music and book reviews. Ms. Lessie received a B.M. from Indiana University, where she studied cello with Fritz Magg and chamber music with Rostislav Dubinsky and James Buswell. At Florida State University she earned an M.M. and completed coursework for a D.M.A.

Cello Museum founder and curator, Dr. Brenda Neece, DPhil (Oxon.), is a cellist and a researcher specializing in the history of the cello. Before starting The Cello Museum in the autumn of 2019, she worked as a freelancer and served for just over a decade as the first curator of the musical instrument collections at Duke University. In addition to playing the cello, doing cello research, and writing about cellos, she enjoys experimenting with variant cellos. In addition to her modern instrument, she also plays a 5-string baroque cello, a small 5-string cello, and sometimes travels with her folding prakticello. She studied cello with Fred Raimi at Duke while she did her undergraduate work at UNC-CH. As part of her interdisciplinary major in music history, art history, and archaeology, she wrote an undergraduate honors thesis under the supervision of Prof. Jon Finson, on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century evolution of the cello. She earned a master’s in cello performance at Auburn University, studying with Martha Gerschefski, and then went on for her musicology doctorate at the University of Oxford (Somerville College) where she was mentored by Prof. Jeremy Montagu and Prof. Hélène La Rue. While in England, she continued her cello studies with William Pleeth. Dr. Neece lives in Durham, NC, with her husband and cats. When not playing or writing about the cello, she enjoys reading, photography, and martial arts.