[ Abe Liebhaber ]

Abe Liebhaber, originally from Santa Barbara, California has been playing cello since he was nine years old. He has won awards from the Santa Barbara Performing Arts Society (first prize) and the Leni Fé Bland Foundation for his performances. As an undergraduate student at University of California Los Angeles, he was awarded the Gluck Fellowship for community outreach.

Having performed with numerous professional orchestral and chamber ensembles in the Los Angeles and Bay areas, Abe was appointed assistant principal cello of the Young Musician Foundation’s Debut Orchestra in 2001. Abe has attended summer music festivals including the Meadowmount School, Strings in the Mountains in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, the Rome Festival and the Adriatic Chamber Music Festival in Bonefro, Italy. In the summer of 2003, he attended the Las Vegas Music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, as a fellowship recipient where he performed with the festival orchestra in the principal position under conductor Michael Gilbert.

He has performed in master classes with Ann Martindale-Williams, Peter Reijto, Yo-Yo Ma, Barry Gold, and Eleanor Schoenfeld. His teachers include Charlene Wilson, Geoffrey Rutkowski, Barry Gold, and David Gibson. Last year, he was fortunate enough to have received a week of challenging lessons with Harvey Shapiro in New York.

He received his degrees in music performance from University of California Los Angeles and California State University Sacramento and holds positions in the Arizona Opera and Sarasota Opera orchestras.