Mike Kaufman, Artistic Director
Cellist Mike Kaufman’s versatile career reflects a deep curiosity and commitment to great music in its many forms. Recent highlights include his ECM Records debut on the disc Con Anima, featuring chamber music by Tigran Mansurian and a performance of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and Zemlinsky’s Maiblumen Blühten überall with members of the LA Opera Orchestra and James Conlon.
Originally from Cleveland, Mike studied with Steve Doane at Eastman and Ralph Kirshbaum at USC. He has performed with great artists of our day, including Leon Fleisher, Midori, Anthony Marwood, Donald Weilerstein, Steven Tenenbom, Roger Tapping, and the Calder Quartet at festivals such as Prussia Cove, Yellow Barn, Music@Menlo, Verbier, Kneisel Hall, Norfolk and Sarasota.
Mike is a founding member of SAKURA, cello quintet described by the LA Times as "brilliant" and "superb." SAKURA tours extensively, and has performed in Disney Hall for the Piatigorsky International Cello Festival, and as Ensemble in Residence at the Da Camera Society.
Passionately involved in contemporary music, Mike has premiered numerous pieces and worked with composers such as Thomas Adès, Jörg Widmann, John Adams, Donald Crockett, Éric Tanguy and Stephen Hartke in interpreting their own music. Thomas Adès declared his performance of Lieux retrouvés, to be "breathtakingly good." He also appeared at Carnegie Hall with John Adams and David Robertson in the American Soundscapes workshop.
Mike is a member of the LA Opera Orchestra and has served as a guest principal at La Monnaie in Brussels. He was a founding member of the LA-based conductorless orchestra Kaleidoscope. Passionate about baroque cello, he has performed as principal cello with Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra of LA and enjoys other projects on period instruments.
He is currently the chair of Chamber Music at Pasadena Conservatory of Music and teaches chamber music at the Colburn School. He previously taught for the Harmony Project, an El Sistema program that serves low-income communities of Los Angeles.