Elena Ariza is a cellist from Cupertino, California and is currently pursuing an Artist Diploma in cello performance at The Juilliard School. She previously attended Columbia University, majoring in computer science, as part of its exchange program with Juilliard. She has performed as Principal Cellist of the Juilliard Orchestra under the batons of Nicholas McGegan, Speranza Scappucci, David Robertson, and Patricia Rogers. She was a finalist of the Juilliard Concerto Competition in 2019.

While an undergrad at Columbia, she performed the Dvorak Concerto with the Columbia University Orchestra, under the direction of Jeffrey Milarsky. In 2018, she gave a world premiere performance of composer Hiroya Miura’s Lustral Shades, collaborating with esteemed musicians of the Japanese tradition. In 2017, she was invited to perform as part of the New World Symphony on one of its season concerts, under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas. Featured on NPR’s From the Top in 2015, Elena also performed as a soloist at Davies Symphony Hall with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra in the same year.

Elena has won numerous solo and concerto competitions such as the Music Teachers National Association’s California State Competition, Pacific Musical Society Annual Competition, Mondavi Young Artists Competition, and the Symphony Parnassus Concerto Competition, among others. She has received various masterclasses and coachings from Frans Helmerson, David Finckel, Joseph Kalichstein, Roger Tapping, Alisa Weilerstein, Don and Vivian Weilersteins, Colin Carr, Paul Katz, Robert deMaine, the Borromeo, Shanghai, and Brentano Quartets, and has attended the Aspen Music Festival and School, Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival and Institute, the Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival and School, the Tanglewood Music Center, Vivac-e!, and the Taos School of Music.

In 2011, Elena helped raise more than $12,000 through three charity concerts that she and her friends organized in the San Francisco Bay Area, in order to help the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Since then, she has performed in several concerts to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Japanese Red Cross, Global Giving, and the Transparent Fish Fund. In her spare time, she enjoys paper crafting and playing chamber music with her violinist brother and her mother, a pianist.

At Juilliard, Elena is currently studying under the tutelage of Astrid Schween and Joel Krosnick. Her former teachers and mentors include Richard Aaron, Ronald Leonard, and Sieun Lin.