Cellist Iona Batchelder is an avid solo, chamber, and orchestral artist. From her earliest memories, classical music was an integral part of Ms. Batchelder’s life. Her very first live concert experience was seeing the Mark Morris Dance Company at the age of three and since then, she has been intensely interested in collaborations with musicians and interdisciplinary artists alike. 

Ms. Batchelder’s appearances with orchestra include the Dvorak and Schumann concertos in Los Angeles’s Bing Theater and Zipper Hall. She has performed as a principal cellist under the batons of Marin Alsop, James Conlon, John Adams, Jeffrey Milarsky, and Joseph Colaneri at halls including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Royce Hall. 

Ms. Batchelder was a founding member of the Unison Quartet, which formed at Juilliard in the fall of 2018. The Unison Quartet worked with members of the Cleveland, Cavani, Escher, Juilliard, Mendelssohn, Pacifica, and American Quartets and participated in the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar, the Perlman Music Program’s Chamber Music Workshop, and the Aspen Music Festival’s Center for Advanced Quartet Studies. They also won an Honorary Mention award at the 2021 Bartók Competition in Budapest, Hungary.  

Ms. Batchelder has attended Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, Juilliard’s ChamberFest, and the Aspen Music Festival as an orchestral fellow. In addition, she has played solo works and chamber music works in masterclasses for artists including Itzhak Perlman, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Ralph Kirshbaum, Joel Krosnick, Gil Kalish, Astrid Schween, Frans Helmerson, Donald and Vivian Weilerstein, and Martin Beaver. Ms. Batchelder was a proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship at The Juilliard School, where she recently graduated with her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees, both under the tutelage of Darrett Adkins, and a Juilliard Career Advancement Fellowship. She currently plays on a 1740 Carlo Antonio Testore cello.