Cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper To Appear As Soloist With New York City Opera Orchestra At Bryant Park, June 26-27, 2025, 7 PM

The supremely gifted and versatile cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper will appear with the New York City Opera Orchestra for two concerts at Bryant Park’s popular outdoor festival, “Picnic Performances,” Thursday evening, June 26 and Friday evening, June 27, 2025, at 7 pm EDT.

Entitled Opera Goes to Hollywood, the programs will be led by Executive Director & Music Director of New York City Opera Constantine Orbelian and conductor Stefano Vignati. Ms. Cooper and the ensemble will perform some of the most famous operatic pieces that have been featured in popular films. Here is a list of pieces Ms. Cooper will perform:

These two concerts are part of the Bryant Park free outdoor festival--Picnic Performances; the park offers free blankets and chairs on a first-come, first-served basis. The concerts will also be live-streamed on Bryant Park’s official YouTube channel. For more information, please visit Bryant Park’s event page, New York City Opera’s website, and Kristina Reiko Cooper’s website.

The internationally heralded cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper stands out among her peers not only for her polished virtuosity but for her fierce intelligence and imaginative programming. Her natural stage presence and effervescent personality inform all aspects of her musicianship—whether as recitalist, soloist with orchestra, recording artist, teacher, lecturer, or as a member of a chamber performance. But it is her curiosity and enthusiasm that have led her to commission and play works by Lera Auerbach, Josef Bardanashvili, Kenji Bunch, Mario Davidovsky, Avner Dorman, Tan Dun, Philip Glass, Tania Leon, Roberto Siera, and Benjamin Yusupov. She serves as Co-Director with Joel Sachs and Cheryl Seltzer of the pioneering New York-based contemporary music group Continuum. Over the years, critics from The New York Times have extolled her praises on numerous occasions: “Kristina Cooper gave a sensational performance…of the cello threnody;” “In the cello sonata, Kristina Reiko Cooper played the challenging cello line with a fluidity that made it seem easy;” “Ms. Cooper’s cello solos sang out in the slow movement with elegance and fine sentiment.”

A turning point in her life came when Ms. Cooper created a consortium of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, and the American Society of Yad Vashem to commission composer Lera Auerbach to write Symphony No. 6 “Vessels of Light.”  Scored for cello, chorus, and orchestra, the work commemorates the heroic deeds of Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara who, during World War II in Lithuania, issued between 2,100 and 3,500 life-saving transit visas to Jews. Owing to his courage by defying Japan’s regulations and risking his own life, generations of visa recipient families are alive today, including Ms. Cooper's husband and three children.

The world premiere of “Vessels of Light,” took place in Lithuania on November 5th, 2022, with Ms. Cooper performing as soloist with the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra and Kaunas State Choir under the leadership of music director Constantine Orbelian. Kaunas, in addition to being the city where Sugihara was vice-consul and where he issued the visas that saved so many lives, was chosen as the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2022 and the performance of this new work was one of the featured highlights of the celebration.

Since then, other notable performances of “Vessels of Light” have included the American premiere last year with the New York City Opera Orchestra and Chorus led by Maestro Orbelian at Carnegie Hall; as well as with the Prague Radio Orchestra conducted by Maestro Alexander Liebreich; UCLA Philharmonia and Chamber Singers conducted by Neal Stulberg; Festival Napa Valley with the Festival Orchestra Napa under the leadership of Maestro Orbelian; Dresden Philharmonie led by François Leleux; and the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, Germany, conducted by Alan Gilbert.

Most recently, “Vessels of Light” was presented in Berlin by the Konzerthaus Orchester led by Joana Mallwitz at the Konzerthaus. Reviewing for Germany’s prestigious Süddeutsche Zeitung, Wolfgang Schreiber wrote: “Auerbach adds a unique color to the solo parts—a lyrical, emotionally transcendent cello voice, brilliantly performed by New York cellist Kristina Reiko-Cooper.  Her artistry illuminates the poetic and melodic expressiveness of the music.” (November 19, 2024)

Ms. Cooper’s 2024-2025 appearances as soloist with orchestra included engagements with the Jerusalem Symphony, the Israel Sinfonietta Beer-sheva, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Kinnor Philharmonic, Kansas City, a concert for Arte TV, and the Mexico City Philharmonic. On April 24, 2025, Ms. Cooper was invited to participate in the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra's commemoration of the Holocaust and gave the world premiere of Uri Brener's cello concerto entitled "Halls of Memory," which is dedicated to the fallen IDF soldiers who died protecting their people and homeland. Veteran music critic Max Stern reviewed for the Jerusalem Post: “Clearly identifying with the work’s anguished message, cello soloist Kristina Reiko Cooper (USA-Israel) impressively projected its melodic asymmetry – as much with her formidable stage presence as with skillfully nuanced and chilling cries drawn from the cello. Both performer and composer of this recently written concerto received a well-deserved ovation at its close.” (April 28, 2025)

A recent highlight was Ms. Cooper’s appearance as soloist at Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall in February, with the New York City Opera and Maestro Orbelian performing the New York premiere of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Fantasy for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 52, and Erich Korngold’s Cello Concerto in C Major. An album of these two works as well as the Weinberg Concerto for Cello and Orchestra will be released in the near future on the Delos label.

Ms. Cooper has appeared as soloist with some of the world’s major orchestras in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Henry Crown Theater in Jerusalem, and the Kennedy Center, including with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonie, the Toronto Symphony, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Prague Chamber Orchestra, the Israel Chamber Orchestra, the Osaka Symphony, the Tokyo Yomiuri Symhony, and Shanghai Symphony under the batons of conductors including Tan Dun, Alan Gilbert, François Leleux, Alexander Liebreich, Joana Mallwitz, and Constantine Orbelian.

A prolific chamber musician, Kristina won the Walter M. Naumburg Chamber Music Award first prize and has been a member of many renowned ensembles, including the Whitman Quartet, Quartetto Gelato, Opus X, and Intersection. Her many festival appearances include The Lincoln Center Summer Festival, Mostly Mozart, Musicians from Marlboro, Bang on a Can All-Stars, and the Stresa International Music Festival.

Born and raised in New York City, Ms. Cooper holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees as well as a doctoral degree from Juilliard, where she studied cello with Joel Krosnick. Her father, Rex Cooper, is an American pianist and former professor at the University of the Pacific and her mother, Mutsuko Tatman, is a violinist of Japanese descent who served for many years as concertmaster of the American Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Cooper’s grandfather, Tomojiro Ikenouchi, was a highly respected Japanese composer and her great-grandfather, Takahama Kyoshi, was considered the greatest haiku poet of the 20^th century.

Ms. Cooper serves as a visiting professor at the Buchmann Mehta School at Tel Aviv University, Israel. She is the founding musical director of The Israel Chamber Music Society, serves as the Vice-President of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. and sits on the board of the Charney Forum for New Diplomacy. Kristina plays on the 1743 Ex-Havermeyer G.B. Guadagnini cello and lives with her husband and three children in Tel Aviv, Israel.

For further information, please contact Hemsing Associates at (212) 772-1132 or visit www.hemsingpr.com.

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