Elan is a 15 year-old cellist who studies with Jonathan Koh at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College Program. Elan is one of nine semi-finalists in the national 2025 28th Annual Sphinx Competition’s Junior Division. In 2024, Elan was First Place winner in the US International Music Competition’s Solo Cello division as well as First Place Winner in USIMC’s Bach Prize. Elan began playing cello at age seven at The Crowden School in Berkeley and has been trained internationally at The Royal Academy of Music junior conservatory in London. He is the recipient of multiple scholarships and honors, including the SFCM Peter Boesch and Darrill Hudson Scholarship (2024), The Foon Scholarship at the Oakland School for the Arts in recognition of outstanding musical talent and academic achievement (2022), the Senior Strings Award, King's College School (Cambridge, UK, 2022), and more. Elan has attended the Bowdoin International Music Festival and Center Stage Strings (2024), Indiana University School of Music (2023), the Cambridge Chamber Academy in the UK (2022), as well as summer workshops at The Crowden School and National Cello Institute. Elan has had the opportunity to study with leading cellists around the world, including Paul Katz, Richard Aaron, Amir Eldan, Horacio Contreras, and Tony Woollard at the Royal Academy of Music and Graham Walker at Cambridge University. He has performed in master classes for Emmanuel Ax, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, and Robert Cohen and has given invited solo performances in London, Cambridge, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Elan is the cellist in the award-winning piano trio, The Onde Trio. As a young multiracial cellist, Elan believes that music can be a way to bridge differences and is dedicated to bringing his passionate interpretations of classical music to diverse audiences.
