Renowned Cellist and composer Laura Cetilia brought her unique talents to Lincoln Elementary Magnet School Friday.
Cetilia performed in front of a group of students and helped educate them on the basics of the instrument, its family and more.
Students at Lincoln got the opportunity thanks to a partnership with the Albany Museum of Art. Cetilia was in town ahead of a performance Saturday for the AMA.
Cetilia’s work encourages listeners to make connections, to be present in the moment, and to make patient explorations within themselves and the music. As a daughter of mixed heritage, Mexican-American cellist Cetilia is at home with in-betweenness, straddling the worlds of performer/composer, acoustic/electronic, and traditional/experimental sound practices. Her music has been described as “unorthodox loveliness” (Boston Globe) and hailed as “alternately penetrating and atmospheric” (Sequenza 21). She has created site-specific sound installations for the Bennington Museum and Ben Ari Museum for Contemporary Art. The Grove Dictionary of American Music describes her electroacoustic duo Mem1 as a “complex cybernetic entity” that “understands its music as a feedback loop between the past and present.” In the performer/composer collective Ordinary Affects, she has collaborated with, commissioned, and premiered works by composers such as Alvin Lucier, Christian Wolff, Michael Pisaro, Jürg Frey, Eva-Maria Houben, and Magnus Granberg.