British-Persian cellist, Ariana Kashefi is equally at home as a soloist, chamber musician and section principal. As a soloist she has performed extensively throughout Europe, including at the Wigmore Hall, Pierre-Boulez Saal, and Berlin philharmonie. She is the winner of the Luigi Nono chamber music competition in Turin with her duo partner, Maksim Stsura and is a City Music Foundation Artist.

She is also a top prize winner of the Rubinstein cello competition and a recipient of the Villa musica scholarship where she was awarded the use of a fine Gagliano cello. Ariana is also a previous Making Music ‘AYCA’ artist  and Park Lane group artist where she premiered a new piece for solo cello dedicated to her by Deborah Pritchard at the Southbank Centre and also performed the work live on BBC radio 3’s In Tune. 

Ariana completed her masters degree at the Hochschule für Musik ‘Hanns Eisler’ in Berlin with the highest possible mark and is very grateful for the support of the Royal Philharmonic society for awarding her the Julius Isserlis scholarship which enabled her to study abroad. She then went on to study at the Barenboim-Said academy in Berlin for an artist diploma with Professor Frans Helmerson, completing it in 2019.

She is also regularly invited as guest principal cellist with the London Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Camarata, Britten Sinfonia and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under maestro Daniel Barenboim.