About

Scottish-American cellist and pianist Hannah MacLeod thrives on live performance. With experience in solo, chamber, recorded and new music, she has found a natural affinity in orchestral playing. Her love of orchestral playing has led to playing assistant principal with the Miami Music Festival Orchestra and the Brevard Sinfonia, and fellowships at the Immanuel and Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival and the National Orchestra Institute, where she performed on the 2018 Grammy nominated Naxos recording of Twentieth Century American works.

While orchestra is her main love, past summer festivals also include intensive chamber music experience at Zodiac Music Academy & Festival, California Summer Music and the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota’s Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute. Hannah also has an extensive piano background, beginning lessons at age six. She is particularly drawn to minimalist, soundtrack music and has experience playing piano chamber music and accompanying.

In May 2016, Hannah graduated Magna Cum Laude from New York University, with a B.M. in cello performance and a minor in linguistics. At NYU, she studied with Eric Jacobsen and Eileen Moon. She became involved with new music, performing in the 2013 New York premiere of the Yves Klein Monotone Silence Symphony and in Pulsing and Shaking, NYU’s new music festival, since its inaugural season. Most importantly, while in New York, she discovered the joy of teaching at UpBeat NYC, an El Sistema inspired nucleo based in the South Bronx. Her passion for El Sistema brought her to the Longy School of Music of Bard College, where as a teaching fellow and the Roman and Melanie Totenberg Scholar, she was heavily involved in Longy’s El-Sistema Side-by-Side Orchestra. At Longy, she earned her M.M. in cello performance, studying under Nicholas Tzavaras. In 2024, she completed her Artist Diploma studies at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, under Dr. Susannah Chapman and Jonathan Spitz.

Hannah is also a proud alum of Interlochen Center for the Arts, where she spent five summers at Interlochen Arts Camp, followed by a post-graduate year at Interlochen Arts Academy. During that year, she performed across the country, in Interlochen's 50th Anniversary Orchestra Tour, which culminated at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. Each year Hannah makes a homecoming to Interlochen, having established herself as an integral member of the camp life staff.