Sterling Elliott

Biography

In Spring 2022, Sterling participated in Performance Today’s Young Artist Residency, which featured educational events, interviews and a feature on the nationally syndicated radio program.

Sterling has a long history with the Sphinx Organization where he won the 2014 Junior Division Competition, becoming the first alumnus from the Sphinx Performance Academy to win the Sphinx Competition. The following year he went on to tour with the Sphinx Virtuosi before being awarded the Organization’s Isaac Stern Award in 2016. This season, Sterling will receive a Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization, awarded to artists who, early in their career, demonstrate artistic excellence, outstanding work ethic, a spirit of determination, and an ongoing commitment to leadership and their communities.

Born into a musical household, Sterling initially wanted to play the violin like his older brother and sister. After a bit of encouragement, he completed The Elliott Family String Quartet, an ensemble that enjoyed personalized arrangements of genres such as bluegrass, gospel, and funk music.

Sterling is pursuing an Artist Diploma at the Juilliard School under the tutelage of Joel Krosnick and Clara Kim, following completion of his Master of Music and undergraduate degrees at Juilliard. He is an ambassador of the Young Strings of America, a string sponsorship operated by Shar Music. He performs on a 1741 Gennaro Gagliano cello on loan through the Robert F. Smith Fine String Patron Program, in partnership with the Sphinx Organization.

Acclaimed for his stellar stage presence and joyous musicianship, cellist Sterling Elliott is a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and the winner of the Senior Division of the 2019 National Sphinx Competition. He has appeared with major orchestras such as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

In the 2024/2025 season Sterling Elliott debuts with the Atlanta Symphony, Reno Philharmonic, Columbus Symphony, Ann Arbor Symphony, Des Moines Symphony, Winston-Salem Symphony, and returns to the Wilmington Symphony. He joins the Madison Symphony for the Beethoven Triple Concerto with Gil and Orli Shaham and returns to Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s led by Louis Langree.

As the YCAT–Music Masters Robey Artist with the London-based Young Classical Artists Trust he will Tour New Zealand in addition to appearances at Wigmore Hall, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Konzerthaus Berlin, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and others. This season he also begins his tenure as a BBC New Generation Artist, and a three-year residency in the Bowers Program of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center appearing with CMLSC at Alice Tully Hall and on tour throughout the U.S.

Sterling has a long history with the Sphinx Organization where he won the 2014 Junior Division Competition, becoming the first alumnus from the Sphinx Performance Academy to win the Sphinx Competition. Last season, Sterling received the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization.

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“Cellist Sterling Elliott held a full Severance Hall in his grasp with a strikingly mature account of David Popper’s Hungarian Rhapsody, a feisty virtuoso showpiece on the Cleveland Orchestra’s Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Concert.”
— The Plain Dealer

"Effortlessly balancing the combined forces of the orchestra... Elliott tossed off the several cadenza-like sections (including the marvelous trill in Variation V) while trading luscious lyrical lines with various solo parts."
— Courier & Press