Elena Ariza, cello, is rapidly establishing herself as one of today’s most creative and community-driven cellists. Featured on Yo-Yo Ma’s Music Art Life project and NPR’s From the Top, she has performed with luminaries such as Marin Alsop, Itzhak Perlman, Michael Tilson Thomas, Vivian Weilerstein, and members of the Brentano and Cassatt string quartets, and appeared at the Marlboro, Norfolk, Ravinia, and Taos music festivals. Most recently, Elena performed Strauss’s Don Quixote at Alice Tully Hall as soloist with the Juilliard Orchestra.

Passionate about community activism, she has organized international relief benefit concerts and performed in hospitals and jail facilities through Project: Music Heals Us. A proud recipient of the C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellowship at Juilliard, Elena is the 2025-27 cellist for Ensemble Connect, an entrepreneurship and teaching fellowship based at Carnegie Hall. Currently serving as Teaching Assistant to Astrid Schween at Juilliard, she previously received an Artist Diploma from Juilliard and a Bachelor of Arts in computer science from the Columbia-Juilliard Exchange Program. Her mentors include the late Joel Krosnick, Ronald Leonard, Sieun Lin, Schween, and Eric Sung. With fellow Marlboro participant Yebin Yoo and pianist Lucas Amory, she is a member of Trio Çava.