Cellist Lydia Rhea has traveled across the world sharing the power of storytelling through music. A firm believer in increasing accessibility to concert halls and diversifying the classical canon, her work has taken her from Carnegie Hall to Cuba in performing and teaching capacities. 

As a soloist, Lydia has performed with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and appeared on NPR’s From theTop with jazz pianist Fred Hersch, with whom she performed one of his original compositions in Boston’s Jordan Hall. In July 2023, Lydia was a member of the quartet-in-residence at the European American Musical Alliance Summer Institute in Paris. She previously attended the Sitka International Cello Seminar where she studied intensively with renowned concert cellist Zuill Bailey on scholarship as the Gloria Miner Fellow. Other festival experiences include the Festival des écoles d'art américaines in Fontainebleau, France; the Moritzburg Festival and Academy in Germany; the Talis Festival & Academy in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina; and the Yellow Barn Young Artist Program, Meadowmount School of Music, and Heifetz International Music Institute in the USA. 

Lydia received her Master’s Degree in Cello Performance from The Juilliard School in 2024 where she studied with Natasha Brofsky. While attending Juilliard, she was part of the Honors Chamber Music Program and additionally studied with Frans Helmerson, Merry Peckham, Joel Krosnick, Catherine Cho, Areta Zhulla, Laurie Smukler, Jamie Laredo, and the Orion String Quartet. This training followed her intense chamber music instruction at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she was mentored by Philip Setzer, Si-Yan Darren Li, Todd Phillips, and Sharon Robinson while studying with Dr. Melissa Kraut. Upon graduating CIM, Lydia received the Speilman Memorial Award for an exceptional cellist and the Kaplow Prize for Uncommon Creativity.

A dedicated advocate for sharing music in spaces beyond the concert hall, Lydia traveled to Cuba in October 2024 where she taught and performed with students through CAYO, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting, educating, and empowering students, teachers, and audiences in the US and Cuba. She previously served on the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Programming Advisory Committee, an internal CIM organization working to diversify CIM’s programming and curriculum as well as provide outside resources for anyone looking for diverse music and composers. Lydia is an artist with Concerts for Compassion, a NYC-based nonprofit that facilitates cross-cultural integration by bringing music and education to displaced peoples and their local communities, and is a Teaching Artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. She regularly brings music into spaces such as immigration centers, hospitals, juvenile detention centers, shelters, and schools. 

Lydia lives in New York City with her cello, Rosie, a Lawrence Wilke instrument made in 2008. When she’s not practicing or teaching you can find her running through Central Park and obliterating her friends and family in the New York Times Games. You can follow along with her daily adventures on her socials @lydia_cello.