Amelia Smerz, from Chicago, Illinois, began playing cello at the age of five. She holds a bachelors from DePauw University, where she studied with Eric Edberg, and a masters degree from McGill University, where she studied with Elizabeth Dolin. She has played concerts and recitals throughout the US, Canada, Europe, China and Japan. She was a winner of DePauw’s Concerto Competition for all four years of her undergraduate career and also won the Brevard Music Festival’s Jan and Beattie Wood Concerto Competition. In the course of her education, Amelia fell in love with the art of teaching and published a seventy-five page thesis on non-traditional pedagogical approaches as her culminating project in DePauw’s honor scholar program. Today, she remains dedicated to developing a private studio and evolving her own approach to teaching students. From 2022-2024, Amelia served as a rotating Principal Cellist in The Orchestra Now at Bard College, serving as principal for three of the orchestra’s Carnegie Hall cycles and for the recording of their most recent CD Exodus: Jewish Composers in Exile. In 2024, Amelia became a founding member of the Trillium String Quartet, which began a two year fellowship at Montclair University’s Cali School of Music in September of this year.