Inbal Segev is “a cellist with something to say” (Gramophone). Combining “thrillingly projected,
vibrato-rich playing” (Washington Post) with “complete dedication and high intelligence” (San Francisco
Classical Voice), she makes solo appearances at leading international venues and with preeminent
orchestras and conductors worldwide. Celebrated for her fresh insights into music’s great masterworks,
the Israeli American cellist is equally committed to reinvigorating the cello repertoire and has
commissioned and premiered major new works from an international who’s who of today’s foremost
contemporary composers.

As an upbeat to her 2025-26 season, Segev has a week-long residency at Chicago’s Grant Park Music
Festival. Bookending the residency are performances of Mark Adamo’s Last Year and Anna Clyne’s DANCE,
which she commissioned from the composer after they were introduced by conductor Marin Alsop. She
also teaches a masterclass and gives recitals that includes her own works to round out the residency. In
the fall of 2025, Segev participates in the International Cello Festival of Canada, performing C.P.E. Bach’s
Cello Concerto in A for the opening concert on a program that features an international roster of cello
soloists. In January of 2026 she reprises Anna Clyne’s DANCE in multiple UK cities, starting at London’s
Barbican, with the National Youth Orchestra (NYO) of Great Britain led by Alexandre Bloch. A frequent
performer with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, she joins them for two fall performances in
Bogotá, Colombia, as well as at Lincoln Center’s Rose Studio in the spring.

Segev is personally responsible for commissioning, premiering, recording, and championing new works by
important living composers from the U.S., Israel, and beyond. Most recently, she commissioned a new cello
concerto from Ukrainian composer Victoria Poleva, giving its world and European premieres in 2023-24
with the Dallas Symphony and London Philharmonic orchestras respectively. To encourage creative
recovery during the early pandemic lockdowns, she launched 20 for 2020, a commissioning, recording, and
video project for 20 cutting-edge composers, including John Luther Adams, Viet Cuong, and Angélica
Negrón, all of whom wrote new works in response to the worldwide crisis. After co-commissioning Anna
Clyne’s concerto DANCE, she premiered the work under Cristian Măcelaru’s leadership at the 2019 Cabrillo
Festival of Contemporary Music in California and recorded it alongside Elgar’s iconic concerto with Marin
Alsop and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Released by Avie, the album was an instant success, topping
the Amazon Classical Concertos chart and inspiring glowing praise from The Guardian, BBC Radio 3 and
other outlets; DANCE’s opening movement was named among NPR Music’s “Favorite Songs of 2020,”
receiving more than twelve million listens on Spotify.

Segev has also brought to life a host of other new works. It was she who gave the world premiere
performance of Timo Andres’s concerto Upstate Obscura at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art
(2018); premiered Dan Visconti’s Cello Concerto with the California Symphony (2017); commissioned and
premiered Gity Razaz’s multimedia piece Legend of Sigh at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust (2015); premiered
and recorded Lucas Richman’s Declaration with the composer conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony
(2015); co-commissioned and premiered Avner Dorman’s Cello Concerto with the Anchorage Symphony
(2012); and premiered Paola Prestini’s Oceano at Columbia University (2002). She also gave the overdue
U.S. premiere of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s long-lost, posthumously reconstructed Cello Concerto, and joined the Albany Symphony for the first performance of Christopher Rouse’s Violoncello Concerto since its
premiere 24 years earlier by Yo-Yo Ma.

Segev’s premiere recordings crown a rich and wide-ranging discography. Having studied Bach’s solo cello
suites for many years, she recorded the complete cycle over a six-month period with Grammy-winning
producer Da-Hong Seetoo at New York City’s Academy of Arts and Letters for release by Vox Classics in
2015; documenting this process behind the scenes, a companion film by Nick Davis Productions was
screened at Lincoln Center and in Maine and Bogotá. Segev’s other recordings include a Romantic program
of Schumann, Chopin, and Grieg with pianist Juho Pohjonen (Avie, 2018); Dohnányi serenades with the
Amerigo Trio (Navona, 2011); cello sonatas by Beethoven and Boccherini with pianist Richard Bishop
(Opus One, 2000); and live accounts of C.P.E. Bach’s A-major concerto and other works (Music@Menlo,
2023). The cellist can also be heard playing music by Peter Nashe on the soundtrack of Bee Season, a 2005
feature film starring Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche.

A prodigy who first played for the Israeli president at just eight years old, Segev came to international
attention ten years later when she made concerto debuts with both the Berlin Philharmonic and Israel
Philharmonic under the baton of Zubin Mehta. Since then, she has appeared as soloist with such leading
orchestras as the Baltimore Symphony, Bamberg Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Dortmund Philharmonic,
London Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lyon, Pittsburgh Symphony, Polish National Radio
Symphony, and St. Louis Symphony, collaborating with Marin Alsop, Stéphane Denève, Edward Gardner,
Kirill Karabits, Lorin Maazel, Cristian Măcelaru, Zubin Mehta, and other of the world’s foremost
conductors. She co-curated the Baltimore Symphony’s New Music Festival from its inception in 2017.

Segev has given solo performances of Bach’s cello suites at international venues from New York’s Lincoln
Center and Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Shanghai Concert Hall and Jerusalem Theatre. Her other
recital highlights include appearances at New York’s Alice Tully Hall and Merkin Concert Hall, Brooklyn’s
National Sawdust, and Bogotá’s Teatro Mayor. Also a dedicated chamber artist, she has given ensemble
performances at Los Angeles’s Walt Disney Concert Hall and Chicago’s Harris Theater, undertaken
international tours with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and collaborated with such
esteemed musicians as Emanuel Ax, Jeremy Denk, Anthony McGill, Jason Vieaux, and the Vogler Quartet.
With former New York Philharmonic concertmaster Glenn Dicterow and violist Karen Dreyfus, she is a
founding member of the Amerigo Trio.

Segev started composing during the pandemic, and her album 20 for 2020 concludes with the first
recording of Behold, her own composition for cello quartet. She went on to write B Natural, an homage to
her teacher Aldo Parisot; scored for cello octet, this received its world premiere performance from the Yale
Cellos ensemble at Yale University in 2023. Subsequent compositions include I’m Nobody! Who are you?, an
Emily Dickinson setting for unaccompanied women’s choir; her string trio, which received its first
performance from the Fort Worth Chamber Music Society in spring 2024; and her Trio for Cello, Clarinet
and Piano, which received its world and U.S. premieres from the counter)induction ensemble in Jerusalem
and New York, had a subsequent performance in Michigan, and will be performed – along with Behold – at
Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival during Segev’s residency in summer 2025.

Besides holding regular interactive live-streamed masterclasses and Q&A sessions at the CelloBello
resource center, Segev has been featured in a live Q&A session at Lincoln Center’s Kaplan Penthouse and a
dedicated episode of The Musical Life podcast series. Available at her YouTube channel and on the Tonebase
platform, the cellist’s popular masterclass series, Musings with Inbal Segev, has inspired a generation of
cellists.

A native of Israel, Inbal Segev began playing the cello at the age of five. At 16 she was invited by Isaac Stern
to the U.S., where she continued her cello studies with Aldo Parisot, Joel Krosnick, Harvey Shapiro, and
Beaux Arts Trio co-founder Bernard Greenhouse, earning degrees from Yale University and the Juilliard
School. Today she lives in New York City with her husband, their teenage children, and her cellos, made by
Francesco Ruggieri (1673) and Carl Becker & Son (1958) respectively.