British-American cellist Katarina Elise, age 22, is a Chamber Music Fellow at the Tianjin Juilliard School in China, where she is pursuing her Master’s Degree as a student of Yeonjin Kim and Sihao He. As a chamber musician, she has performed with artists such as the Emerson Quartet, Shanghai Quartet, Denis Brott, Steven Banks, Philip Setzer, and Xiangyu Zhou. In 2024 she was winner of the Tianjin Juilliard School’s concerto competition, and in 2023 was invited by Zuill Bailey to his Sitka Cello Seminar in Sitka, Alaska.

Raised in London, she was taught by Robert Max at the Royal Academy of Music before moving to the U.S.A. at age 14 to study at the Cleveland Institute of Music in their Young Artist Program and continued to her undergraduate degree in Cello Performance and Music Theory. During her time in Cleveland, Elise studied with cellists Richard Weiss, Charles Bernard, and Dane Johansen.

Elise has a devotion to outreach, and has played for audiences in detention centers, hospitals, schools, homeless centers, sexual violence crisis centers, and more. The London Chamber Orchestra awarded her an Award of Recognition at age 13 for her fundraising through concerts for their educational programs. Today, she teaches as a leader of the chamber mentorship program at the Tianjin Juilliard School Pre College program.