About

Cellist So Sugiyama started his musical studies at the age of three and enrolled at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, CA shortly thereafter. In 2012, So graduated from Columbia University as a John Jay National Scholar with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy while concurrently studying cello with George Neikrug in Boston.

As a member of the Emanio Quartet, So held a chamber music residency at the Banff Centre in the summer of 2016 as a recipient of the Finch Scholarship, and was invited by the Yale School of Music to perform for music educators across the country at the opening concert of the 2015 Symposium on Music in Schools. The Emanio String Quartet was also selected for Philip Setzer's inaugural String Quartet Intensive Program and a quartet residency at the New Music for Strings Festival in Aarhus, Denmark.

In recent years, So has performed in masterclasses for Richard Aaron, Darrett Adkins, David Finckel, Matt Haimovitz, Bonnie Hampton, Wu Han, Desmond Hoebig, Eric Kim, Robert McDonald, Michael Mermagen, Brinton Smith, Alicia, Donald, and Vivian Weilerstein, and members of the Tokyo, Brentano, and Shanghai Quartets.

Other recent engagements have included the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he was awarded the TSAI Orchestral String Mentor-Fellowship serving as Principal Cellist of the Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra while studying under Richard Aaron and Brinton Smith. So was also invited to the Britten-Pears Orchestra Festival in Aldeburgh, England under the baton of Semyon Bychkov.

So completed his master’s of music at Stony Brook University as a student of Colin Carr, and he is currently continuing as a full scholarship doctoral candidate. So studies chamber music with the Emerson String Quartet while also serving as their teaching assistant and for the Graduate Chamber Music Program.

So plays on a contemporary cello made by Joseph Grubaugh and Sigrun Seifert and a German bow by H.R. Pfretzschner, both generously loaned by the Virtu Foundation.

Music

Beethoven Cello Sonatas (1-5)
Bach Cello Solo Suites (1-6)
Brahms e minor and F Major Cello Sonatas
Boccherini Sonata in A Major
Chopin Cello Sonata
Prokofiev Cello Sonata
Shostakovich Cello Sonata
Franck Violin Sonata
George Crumb Solo Cello Sonata

Videos

Past groupmuses (1)