Grammy Award-winning cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio makes Philippine debut at PPO's concert

Grammy Award-winning cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio makes her Philippine debut at the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra's upcoming concert on November 15, 2024, 7:30 PM at the Samsung Performing Arts Theater in Circuit, Makati.

Billed as Triumph, the second concert of the PPOs 40th season sees Sant'Ambrogio take on one of the most popular pieces in the cello repertoire, Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85.

Other pieces programmed for this evening include the lushly orchestrated Capriccio espagnol, Op. 34 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and the uplifting Symphony No. 2, Op. 61 by Robert Schumann to be conducted by PPO Music Director and Principal Conductor Grzegorz Nowak.

Always pushing the boundaries of classical music and looking for new ways to draw in new audiences, the award-winning cellist first leapt to international attention when she was a winner at the International Tchaikovsky Violoncello Competition in Moscow, Russia. From then on, she has appeared as a soloist in concerts of various orchestras in Beijing, Boston, Budapest, Chicago, Prague, Osaka, and San Francisco, USA, among others.

Sara Sant'Ambrogio

A founding member of the Eroica Trio, the award-winning cellist has performed with Sting and Joshua Bell in the production of Twin Spirits, featuring the love affair between composer Robert Schumann and pianist Clara. Tracks from her Dreaming solo CD have been featured in various film soundtracks, including the opening title of HBO award-winning documentary A Matter of Taste.

Sant’Ambrogio started her cello studies with her father John, a principal cellist of the St. Louis Symphony. At 16, she was invited on full scholarship to study with David Soyer at the Curtis Institute of Music where she received her high school diploma.

Three years later, world renowned cellist Leonard Rose invited Sant’Ambrogio to study at The Juilliard School. Within weeks of arriving, she won the All-Juilliard Schumann Cello Concerto Competition, resulting in the first of many performances at Lincoln Center.