Longmont's Freya Cellista, whose last name is her musical moniker, has upped the ante by playing cello while hanging fifteen feet in the air from a static trapeze — something Ma has never done.
After starting her career in the Bay Area (on the floor), the Colorado native began training for trapeze work.
“It feels like it found me. I don’t even remember taking a first class. It feels like all of a sudden, I had this new limb. A very heavy one,” Cellista says. “It has dramatically shifted the shape of my career and my art.”
After conquering her fear of heights, the high-wire act naturally found its way into Cellista’s multimedia works and performances. While there are already aerial vocalists, violinists and flutists, Cellista has become a trailblazer by taking her cello – hardly the lightest instrument – into the air.
“I have not found another aerial cellist yet. I’m having to build my own vocabulary on my own. There’s no one to reference. I’m just having to figure things out,” she explains. “It can be so frustrating, like, ‘How do I get the cello down when I’m in a knee hang? Can I play the cello when I’m just hanging from my toes?’”
Those are all valid questions, and the answer, as far as Cellista is concerned, is yes.
But it’s by no means a sideshow of aerial stunts. The musician is serious about chamber music and respects the art form. You will not see her perform Sergei Prokofiev's "Sinfonia Concertante" up there.
“It’s tough, but there was also this realization that when I do this, I’m not planning to play difficult repertoire,” she says. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to play beautiful classical music that’s meant to be in a traditional setting or on the ground to truly do it justice. I decided I don’t want to be that person who’s doing a spectacle show.”
Nonetheless, Cellista’s originals are beautiful in their own right. Her latest album, or “stage poem about serenity,” as she calls it, Élégie, follows a shapeshifting blackbird who transforms into a human and back.
She'll debut the piece on Saturday, March 23, in the Dairy Center for the Arts' Gordon Gamm Theater. Dustin Schultz, who just finished a tour with Skinny Puppy, and Hilary Whitmore are performing a prologue set. Cellista, Kennedy Kabasares and Joel Baker are credited as choreographers, while Jennifer Gigantino and Bryan Gibel provided film editing and cinematography, respectively.
The performance is dedicated to Ron Miles, Cellista’s former Metro State University of Denver professor and prolific jazz cornet and trumpet player who passed away in 2022. “He was just an incredible educator and performer,” she solemnly says.
With Élégie, the audience is taken on a journey into the walled-off fantasy world of Cloture, an abandoned city littered with altars adorned in cold candles and the mementos and memories of the phantom population. Curious about what happened, the bird takes human form to explore. “Most of the show I play it in the air, but I also just have it around my back with a guitar strap, walking the streets of this make-believe city that I created,” Cellista says.
It's safe to say Cellista hasn't been this close to the floor while performing recently.
Courtesy Cellista
“I’m getting to look at them through a new lens — the lens of circus and physical theater," she explains. "When I started studying and training on static trapeze a couple of years ago, that changed my life. It became something that felt like the perfect...I don’t know what the right word would be. But it was the right thing for telling stories.
“When I look at the static trapeze objectively, it kind of looks like a window; it can be a doorway," she continues. "It can be all kinds of things. ... There’s a scene where I get on it and just swing like you would when you’re a kid. Doing it live, it feels so playful and cool.”
In preparation, Cellista trained extensively at the New England Center for Circus Arts in Vermont, putting in upwards of 35 hours per week. Along with her Luis & Clarke carbon fibre cello and 1885 Czech cello named Chordelia, she doesn’t see herself returning to terra firma full-time anytime soon, and plans to pursue more opportunities outside of the classical chamber setting. Think circuses. But no matter where you catch her, Cellista is surely a sight to see.
“It felt right,” Cellista says of playing from the trapeze. “What’s interesting is what it allowed me to do is make explicit the relationship I have with my cello, which has always been more than just an object that I play. It’s always been a companion."
Cellista, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 23, Dairy Center for the Arts, 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder. Tickets are $10-$15.
