Serafim Smigelskiy, cello

Serafim Smigelskiy has established himself as one of today's most promising young cellists. He appeared as soloist with the Juilliard School Symphony Orchestra, Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra, Jupiter Chamber Players, Argento Chamber Ensemble, ECCE, ArsViva Strings Orchestra, Axiom contemporary music ensemble, Dal Niente and Quartet Accorda. Serafim is currently the cellist of the critically acclaimed Tesla Quartet  as well as artistic director of ECCE, a New York/Boston-based chamber ensemble specializing on contemporary classical music.

Inspired by contemporary art, Serafim performs a wide repertoire of modern music and collaborates with ensembles of new music. Working directly with such composers as Georg Friedrich Haas, Chaya Czernowin, Mathias Pintscher, Magnus Lindberg, Steve Reich has led to performances of their music at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Lincoln Center, Harvard University's Radcliff Hall, Moscow Philharmonic Hall, and others. Serafim also has a keen interest in historic performance practice and has been extensively studying baroque cello with Phoebe Carrai at the Juilliard Historical Performance Department. As a baroque cellist, he has performed alongside William Christie, Robert Mealy, Nicholas McGegan with Juilliard 415 and Sebastians ensembles. Serafim has studied and collaborated with numerious prominent musicians, such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Natalia Gutman, Laurence Lesser, Colin Carr, Martin Storey, Richard Aaron, Eric Rosenblith, Ben Sayevich, Stanislav Ioudenitch,William Grant Naboré,Vassily Sinaisky, Julius Berger,Alban Gerhardt, Giya Kancheli,Alexey Liubimov, Daniel Muller Shott, Nicholas Kitchen, Peter Stump and many others.

Born in 1985, in St. Petersburg, Russia, he began study of cello at the age of 6 with Galina Korolyóva. At 15, he entered the Rimsky-Korsakov College where he was a student of Konstantin Kucherov. During this period he received several awards from international competitions and foundations, including the First Prize of the Russian State's Russian Music Competition, Third Prize in the International Mravinsky Cello Competition, and Second Prize in the Mussorgsky String Competition. In 2004 he entered the St. Petersburg State Conservatory, where he studied with Alexey Massarsky. During that period he studied with Alexander Richter of the Saint-Petersburg Philharmonic String Quartet and Josif Levinson of the Taneyev String Quartet. Serafim also was a cellist with the eminent Rimsky-Korsakov String Quartet, chamber orchestra Divertissement and the St. Petersburg Soloists artist management organisation. Before moving to New York City in 2010, he received the Graduate Certificate at Park University International Center for Music where he was student of Martin Storey. Serafim has graduated from The Juilliard School studying with Richard Aaron (cello) and Sylvia Rosenberg (chamber music).

 His other interests include photography, reading and traveling.