Hailed for her “sublime cello prowess” (Take Effect), “absorbing originality” (Gramophone), and “mesmerizing beauty” (NY Music Daily), internationally acclaimed Canadian cellist ARLEN HLUSKO is a dynamic, versatile artist who has performed extensively as soloist and chamber musician across North & South Americas, Asia, and Europe. She is “capable of playing with great delicacy but also fearlessness; regardless of the character of the material, she executes it with authority and conviction […] and open-hearted expression is present throughout” (Textura). Cellist of the Bang on a Can All-Stars sextet (extolled by the New York Times for “combining the power and punch of a rock band with the precision and clarity of a chamber ensemble”), Arlen also regularly performs with several other ensembles, including Manhattan Chamber Players, The Knights, and Dolce Suono Ensemble, and is a member of the Harry Chapin Band and recent alumna of the Curtis Institute of Music and Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect. Interested in a wide array of music, she has collaborated closely with artists from Jordi Savall to Midori to Meredith Monk to David Byrne, and is a Grammy-award winner for her collaboration with The Crossing, as well as a laureate of several competitions. Arlen has been featured on CBC’s “30 Under 30,” and is a Larsen Artist. She has debuted with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Concert Orchestra, and the Calgary Philharmonic, among others, and has been invited to several pre-eminent chamber music festivals, including Spoleto USA, Tippet Rise, Bay Chamber Concerts, and Music from Angel Fire. Committed to using her music to connect with and serve her community, Arlen founded her own interactive chamber music concert series, Philadelphia Performances for Autism, and is involved with numerous communities, including Carnegie Hall’s “Musical Connections” at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.

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Hailed for her “sublime cello prowess” (Take Effect), “ravishing bow tone” (Textura), “terrific focus” and “hypnotic effect” (BBC), internationally acclaimed Canadian cellist ARLEN HLUSKO is a dynamic and versatile artist who has performed extensively throughout Asia, Europe, and North and South America. She has appeared professionally as a soloist and chamber musician in prestigious venues across the world, including all 3 halls at Carnegie Hall, Field Concert Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Le Philharmonie de Paris, Seoul Arts Center, Roy Thompson Hall, London’s Southbank Centre, Merkin Hall, Staatsoper Hanover, Library of Congress, The Metropolitan Museum, and Guangzhou Opera House. As a soloist, Arlen has appeared with numerous orchestras (including the LA Phil, BBC Concert Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic, Raidió Teilifís Éireann Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, l'Orchestre Symphonique de Sherbrooke, Kitchener Waterloo Chamber Orchestra, and more), has given recitals across North America and China, and has been a featured performer on NPR, WNYC, BBC (UK), CBC (Canada), and WHYY. Arlen is a passionate chamber musician, and has collaborated with renowned artists such as Ida Kavafian, Donald Weilerstein, Jordi Savall, Anthony Roth Costanza, Roger Tapping, Pedja Muzijevic, Roberto Diaz, Hsin-Yun Huang, Ricardo Morales, Lynn Harrell, Tara Helen O'Connor, Andres Diaz, Stephen Taylor, Ronald Leonard, the Tokyo, Miami, Tesla, and Dali String Quartets, and members of the Guarneri, Orion, London Haydn, Cavani, Dover, and St. Lawrence String Quartets, and Ensemble Intercontemporain. Festival appearances include Spoleto USA’s Bank of America Chamber Music, Bang on a Can’s Summer Fest at MASS MoCA, Tippet Rise, Bay Chamber Concerts, Perlman Music Program's Chamber Music Workshop & Winter Residencies in NY & FL, Music from Angel Fire, the Taos School of Music, Four Seasons Winter Workshop, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Avaloch Farm Music Institute, The Artosphere Festival, The Banff Centre's Chamber Residency and Masterclasses, Lake George Music Festival, Innsbrook Festival’s Emerging Artists Program, Ireland's Clandeboye Festival, Pinchas Zukerman’s Young Artist Program, and Domaine Forget Chamber Festival. She has performed in Curtis on Tour ensembles across Asia, Europe, and the United States, has mentored and coached younger students at the Curtis Institute of Music, as well as serving on faculty at Curtis Summerfest. She has also been artist-in-residence at Rutgers University, Skidmore College, and Lawrence University, and coached chamber music at several summer festivals. Additionally, Arlen enjoys orchestral playing, and has performed as Principal Cellist of several ensembles, including the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and Symphony in C, and was invited to perform as guest Principal Cellist of The Banff Centre Orchestra.

Arlen is passionate about finding creative ways to use music to serve and enrich her community. She was chosen as a 2015-16 Curtis ArtistYear Fellow, enabling her to spend a year as a citizen-artist dedicated to finding meaningful ways to reach individuals with autism and dementia, mainly focusing on communities that have limited access to the arts. Through this, she forged partnerships with the Penn Memory Center and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and, as a continuation of some of this work, Arlen won a 2016 Tarisio Trust Young Artist Grant to found her series, Philadelphia Performances for Autism. Equally committed to pedagogy, Arlen has served as a Teaching Artist for Carnegie Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and Project 440. Arlen has also recently collaborated in performance with teaching artists from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York Philharmonic, and Philadelphia Orchestra; given masterclasses in the United States, Canada, China, Colombia, and Germany; coached several youth orchestras in the greater Philadelphia and NYC metropolitan areas; lead workshops for high school and college aged students on Interactive Performances; and actively maintains private cello studios in Philadelphia and New York. Since 2011, Arlen has frequently volunteered as both coach and private cello teacher with “Play on, Philly!” and “Youth Orchestra Los Angeles,” and has been asked to speak at conferences and symposiums in Los Angeles and Philadelphia as a result of some of this work. She also has previous experience teaching advanced placement music theory and ear training at the Colburn School of Performing Arts.

Arlen is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where she held the Jacqueline du Pre Memorial Fellowship and studied with Carter Brey and Peter Wiley. Her previous teachers include Andres Diaz, Ronald Leonard, John Kadz, David Hetherington, Roberta Janzen, and Anne Vallentyne. She has won top prizes in several competitions, including Kingsville International Competition's Best Performance by a Cellist and Calgary Kiwanis' coveted Rose Bowl. She has been a featured performer on NPR’s “What Makes it Great” with host Rob Kapilow. As principal cellist of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, Curtis generously loaned Arlen a rare Guadagnini cello from their instrument bank. During the rest of her tenure at school, she was very fortunate to play on a Joseph Hill cello, again generously on loan to her from Curtis' instrument bank.

Arlen was recently appointed cellist of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, having previously been a core member of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect (formerly known as Ensemble ACJW, or “The Academy”). Based out of the east coast (NYC/Philadelphia), she is also a member of Dolce Suono Ensemble and the Ellipses Ensemble, and regularly performs with other such ensembles as The Knights, Ensemble Signal, Frisson, Manhattan Chamber Players, The Crossing Choir, Jupiter Chamber Players, and Network for New Music. She has toured and performed as a substitute cellist in several chamber groups, including Intersection Trio and the Tesla Quartet. She is also a member of IRIS Chamber Collective, and has been a substitute cellist the Princeton Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Ballet, in addition to being on the substitute list for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Arlen also served for nearly a decade as Assistant to the Director (Ida Kavafian, and subsequently Tara Helen O’Connor and Daniel Phillips) at Music From Angel Fire.

In 2019, Arlen won a Grammy for her collaboration with The Crossing Choir on Lansing McLoskey’s powerful Zealot Canticles. She has released 2 solo albums: the first, a collaboration featuring Scott Ordway’s exquisite Nineteen which she commissioned in 2018, which was released by ACIS Productions in 2021. The second, [in]verse, was inspired by a project undertaken during the pandemic lockdown in 2020: a collaborative project with FFDN (Toronto), in which she curated pairings of poetry and music to lean into community in a time of immense isolation. It was released commercially by Bright Shiny Things in 2023; the poetry was performed by world-renowned dance makers, and the musical selections by Arlen + friends.

Arlen is a proud Larsen Artist, and plays a cello by an unknown maker but estimated to have been built in the early 1800s in Italy, soon after restored in England. She plays a Bernard Walke bow.

When not on stage or in rehearsal, Arlen can generally be found outside, or buried in some book. Having grown up in a quiet, rural area of Canada, Arlen finds immense joy in getting outside and exploring nature, and is always up for an adventure. She loves hiking and backpacking, spending days on end in forests or atop mountains. She also enjoys fashion design, photography, swimming, reading, hot yoga, learning about neurology and psychology, and spending time with friends and family. She is currently based out of Philadelphia and NYC, where she resides with her partner, cellist Frankie Carr, and their two cats, Norbert Nuttall and Jean-Clawed.