Thea Mesirow is a cellist, educator, composer, and artist based in NYC. Hailed as “hypnotic and engaging” by Cleveland Classical, “Thea Mesirow’s cello…emits much richness and expressiveness” (Take Effect Reviews). She is the cellist for Telos Consort and principal cellist of the ADCA Symphony Orchestra. Recent performances include a solo program with PAC-NYC, the US premiere of a solo piece by Karen Tanaka, premiering a new piece by Dante Cucurullo for cello and orchestra, premiering a work for solo cello by Alyssa Regent with New Chamber Ballet, and presenting a series of concerts with the Chamber Music Society and Telos Consort. As a soloist and chamber musician, Thea has worked with composers such as Antoine Bueger, Suzanne Farrin, Eric Moe, Reiko Fueting, Sofia Gubaidulina, played with groups such as Talea, andPlay, and Ensemble Signal, and performed at Radio City Music Hall, Lincoln Center, National Sawdust, and Carnegie Hall, among others.
In this 2026/27 season Thea will be performing with Marked Ensemble in their debut concert, performing works by Morton Feldman, Negar Soley, and Steve Long for the Graphic Content Festival alongside cellist T.J. Borden, and playing a new piece for cello and voice by Reiko Füting for his Kaspar project, among other performances.
As a composer, writer, and artist, Thea’s work explores two large ideas: the temporary community created by concert spaces, and the ways in which emotional and physical autonomy and agency is restricted by societal factors. Her current project, shared residues, explores these two ideas simultaneously by asking an audience to interact with sound-making sculptures, alongside Thea and other musicians playing on their instruments, to explore their own autonomy within a classical concert space. In the 2025/26 season she self-produced two shows: Labyrinth which included a new iteration of shared residues as well as music by Maya Bennardo; and Actualizing Communities, which included the premiere of her new piece, You’re Sitting in This Room, with percussionist and composer Aaron Foster Breilyn. She has had works shared in Rivulet Magazine and the Los Angeles Times. Her projects have been funded by organizations such as Chamber Music America, the Alice M. Ditson Fund, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, and The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
A passionate educator, she teaches with the Youth Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Washington Heights Community Conservatory, and runs workshops with the NYU composition department, alongside her private studio. She has held lectures and workshops at Columbia University, Manhattan School of Music, Tulane University, and the CUNY Graduate Center, among others. Thea holds a BFA from CalArts where she studied with Erika Duke, a master’s from Manhattan School of Music where she studied with Fred Sherry, and an Artist Diploma from NYU where she studied performance and pedagogy with Marion Feldman. She plays on an Eric Benning cello and an Alex Moro bow.