Riana Anthony, cello

Riana Anthony began playing the cello at the age of nine in Japan under the direction of her mother, Lifen Anthony, and cellist, Kurata Sumiko. She made her Honolulu Symphony debut at age 12, performing the J. Haydn Cello Concerto No. 1, and then the A. Dvorak Cello Concerto three years later.

A graduate of the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings and Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, Riana was under the tutelage of Hans Jorgen Jensen and Julie Albers. Since 2017, Riana is an Artist in Residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium under the direction of Gary Hoffman and Jeroen Reuling.

The Shanghai City Symphony Orchestra featured Riana as a soloist in their “The City, The Romanticism” performance of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto, followed by a recital tour in China in the same season. In 2016, Riana made her Kennedy Center debut and performed recitals in the United States, China, and Denmark, closing the year with a performance of D. Kabalevsky’s Cello Concerto No. 2. Riana has been invited to perform at the Future Master Concert Series at the Oriental Arts Center in Shanghai for several seasons and was was a featured soloist at the Peninsula Music Festival, performing with the Peninsula Music Festival Symphony under the baton of maestro Victor Yampolsky.

Riana most recently performed the European premiere of John William’s newest composition, “Highwood’s Ghost,” with the Brussels Philharmonic and maestro Stéphane Denève at the Flagey Festival in Brussels, Belgium.
An avid chamber musician, Riana is involved in various chamber music projects and performs frequently in a wide range of settings. Riana was invited to the Rome Chamber Music Festival for four seasons and was a returning Newdome Fellowship Artist at the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival. As the first prize winner of the 2016 Dover Quartet Competition, WFMT’s “Music in Chicago” broadcasted her quartet’s performance of the Lutoslawski String Quartet quartet. Most recent festival appearances include performances at the Keuka Lake Music Festival, Académie musicale
de Villecroze, Domaine Forget, Seiji Ozawa International Academy, Waterloo Festival, Festival of Minimes and Festival Tibor Varga in Sion. Some collaborations include musicians such as Robert McDuffie, Miguel da Silva, Marc Coppey, Pavel Vernikov, Lorenzo Gatto, Hsin-Yun Huang, Jean- Claude Van Den Eynden, and Alessandro Carbonare.

In the last season Riana has performed in chamber music projects in cities across nine different countries, in prestigious halls including Victoria Hall in Geneva, Foundation Louis Vuitton, and Auditorium du Louvre in Paris.
Riana participated in the Aspen Music Festival for several seasons as a fellowship recipient, and has performed and engaged in music festivals and masterclasses including the Liechtenstein Internationale Musikakademie, Cello Akademie Rutesheim, Pyeongchang Music Festival, Menuhin Festival’s Gstaad String Academy, and Moritzburg Festival, and has received direction under renowned musicians such as Emanuel Ax, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jens Peter Maintz, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, Frans Helmerson, Sadao Harada, and Nobuko Imai.

Scholarship by an anonymous donor