“In a region known for disrupting the status quo, Cellista is celebrating the legacy of the original disruptors.”
—Andrew Gilbert, San Jose Mercury News
Cellista
Cellist • Aerialist • Composer • Performer
Las Vegas, NV
Cellista is a Las Vegas–based aerial cellist and composer, widely recognized as the first artist to develop a sustained touring practice of performing original works for cello in the air on static trapeze and other aerial apparatus.
Her narrative multimedia “stage poems” merge surrealism, political inquiry, and genre-defying performance. She toured her self-produced and directed one-woman aerial cello work Élégie nationally and in the UK from 2023–24 to critical acclaim. In 2021, she premiered original compositions at Lincoln Center in collaboration with the New York Philharmonic and the Howard Zinn Education Committee.
Her interdisciplinary exhibition The End of Time, created alongside visual artist Barron Storey, and her immersive stage poem Pariah further established her as a boundary-crossing voice in contemporary performance.
She performed in a custom production at the Mayfair Supper Club at the Bellagio. Cellista has toured internationally, contributed music to film and television, and appeared on projects including Will & Grace and Better Things. A former chapter governor of the Recording Academy and San Jose arts commissioner, she holds a master’s degree from Berklee College of Music and is the founding artistic director of House of Cellista, a micro-arts center supporting artists and affordable housing initiatives.
Featured Stage Poem
Élégie
A stage poem about serenity
A one-hour stage poem starring Cellista as Élégie, a blackbird who shape shifts into human form and back.
“Watching Cellista find new relationships with the instrument she has already spent so much time with has been inspiring to me as a director. It takes patience and courage to change patterns we are used to performing with. Cellista is brave enough to connect elements that you would not expect to be seen together.”
“Cellista is a unique artist. She pools her diverse talents together to combine into a captivating whole. From music to circus to visual art and the crafted word, Élégie is a full package experience, a feast for the audience.”
“She gave me quotes to put around the emptiness. She gave me context. And subtext. And reflex-tions of what has now filled the void.”
Denver’s Westword-Cleo Mirza
Cellista, is a performer who doesn't believe in the stage. She's all about bringing people together, and the separation a stage creates between the artist and the audience is counterproductive to that goal.
https://www.westword.com/music/cellista-brings-transfigurations-to-mercury-cafe-11491176
Cellista: Illuminating Narratives at the Tech Museum of Innovation Part II
Cellista, regarding San Jose: "It’s history is something that I hope is cultivated and nourished."
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Cellista: Illuminating Narratives at the Tech Museum of Innovation Part I
“…through my storytelling, I could point to a commonality between myself, music, science, and you.”
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Finding San Jose in KQED
As Cellista suggests in the liner notes, on how best to listen to Finding San Jose: “Be alone. In a candlelit room; root yourself firmly in the present with eyes wide open. Listen all the way through.”
Indeed, letting one’s imagination conjure the feeling of leaves crunching beneath the feet and the expressive faces of city dwellers passing by in “St. James Park” changes one’s perspective of San Jose. Whether you live here or not, it will be a new one that connects you to an alluring persona you can fall in love with — which is what Cellista intended all along.
IMAGINE SJ SHOWCASE #1
A collaborative, monthly event series between Future Arts Now, Kooltura Marketing, and Knight Foundation, the ImagineSJ Showcase that provides a platform for San Jose’s newest most innovative thinking
End of Time MetroActive
Storey and Seeburger came together via the Anno Domini exhibit. At 75, Storey draws inspiration from dark, disquieting subjects. Two previous Anno Domini shows in particular tackled the horrors of the Iraq war, and, in another instance, the brutal platform of suicide. Neither exhibit was even remotely comfortable to view. Seeburger, on the other hand, is less than half of Barron's age and is trying to graft her analysis of Messiaen's quartet onto a conversation about the San Jose arts scene.
MetroActive
...Finding San José is a cinematic work; live selections will be performed at a screening of the album’s accompanying “making-of” documentary, Cellista, at Campbell’s Diamond in the Rough Film Festival later this month.
Seeburger is adamant that Finding San José is an experience—best consumed alone, by candlelight, eyes wide open, mind firmly in the present and in one sitting. “I do want my audience to work just a little bit and be present in my process.” says Seeburger.
Mercury News
“Most especially, this is an offering to the artists of San Jose,” she says. “I owe San Jose my creative life. I see the town going through a period of rapid growth and development, and I would like to offer this album to my community in dedication of a time when San Jose used to be orchards.”
Content Magazine
“California for me was this place where you do healthy things and everybody is optimistic and happy,” she recalls, mocking this supposed culture of idealism. “I’d always make fun of California. But then when I moved here, it’s like my whole world opened up.”
JMS Podcast with Jorge Sanchez
"What inspires me? The community I live in." — Cellista
Listen to Interview #36 - Cellista