Mariel Roberts

American cellist Mariel Roberts is widely recognized not just for her virtuosic performances, but as a “fearless explorer” in her field (Chicago Reader) whose work bridges avant-garde, contemporary, classical, improvised, and traditional music. Her close collaborators have also spanned a wide range of genres and include some of the most important figures on the contemporary and experimental scene, such as George Lewis, Alex Mincek, Tim Hecker, Nate Wooley, M. Lamar, Patrick Higgins (Zs), Ingrid Laubrock, Jeffrey Mumford, Sam Pluta, Eric Wubbels, and Ambrose Akinmusire. She has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across four continents, as a member and co-director of the Wet Ink Ensemble, as well as with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Mivos Quartet, Bang on a Can All Stars, and Ensemble Signal, performing regularly on major stages for new music such as the Lincoln Center Festival (New York), Wien Modern (Austria), Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), Cervantino Festival (Mexico), Klang Festival (Denmark), Shanghai New Music Week (China), Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), and the Aldeburgh Music Festival (U.K.). Roberts' compositions have been performed at venues such as Merkin Hall and Miller Theatre at Columbia University in New York City. She has released two solo albums of new works commissioned for her: Nonextraneous Sounds (2012) and Cartography (2017) and has been featured on a wide variety of recordings, including titles on Innova Records, Albany Records, New World Records, New Amsterdam, Carrier Records, New Focus, and Urtext Records.