Our Projects

Fall 2023 Project: Cello in Jazz

This semester, we plan on performing a variety of jazz standards arranged for cello ensemble. Keep an eye out for more information! Date and location TBD.

Past Projects
Bach the Vote


To encourage all to vote in 2020, CELLOHIO created #BachtheVote. We continued the tradition in 2023, performing at the Ohio Union. The campaign pairs critical information for voters with performances of Bach from CELLOHIO cellists.

PARTY ARTY | Classical Music Rave

In November 2017, CELLOHIO collaborated with Brendan Jan Walsh, internationally celebrated DJ and cellist currently living in Amsterdam, produced the first Classical Music Rave in North America.

More than 350 students, musicians, and community members made music history on Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017 at the first Classical Music Rave in North America. Presented at TRISM in Columbus, OH and produced by CELLOHIO, PARTY ARTY featured local artists Sweet Teeth, an electronic pop duo; XIOMA, an acoustic cello project; and CELLOHIO, Ohio State University’s cello orchestra. Brendan Jan Walsh, Creative Director and Co-Founder of the original Classical Music Rave in Amsterdam, headlined PARTY ARTY under his stage name, Mr Van Walsh.

The Prison Project

CELLOHIO performed for inmates and volunteers at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient, OH. We premiered Sam Johnson’s arrangement of the calypso, loosely improvised Stay On It by Julius Eastman, a gay composer of color who was evicted from his New York apartment in the 1980s and later died homeless in Buffalo, NY. Our second piece, an excerpt from Quartet for the End of Time by Olivier Messiaen, was composed in a Nazi prisoner of war camp during World War II.

TEDxOhioStateUniversity

On a frigid January night in 1941, four musicians premiered Olivier Messiaen’s masterpiece, Quartet for the End of Time, for an audience of shivering prisoners and Nazi guards at the Stalag 8A camp in Gorlitz, Germany. Olivier Messiaen was captured by the Nazis while serving as a nurse in a French volunteer hospital. Herded into a cattle car bound for Gorlitz, Messiaen carried a knapsack stuffed with symphonic scores and concertos. In the desolate camp, a sympathetic guard provided Messiaen with paper, pencil, and a secluded shed to compose for other captured musicians.

Messiaen, a devout, mystical Catholic, was inspired by the Angel of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation, who lifts his hand toward heaven, saying, ‘There shall be time no longer.” Imprisoned during a brutal war of unprecedented scale, Messiaen composed a masterpiece about the end of the world. Yet his work is not full of rage. From the darkest precipice of our humanity, Messiaen created a transcendent song of praise for light and hope. We hope you enjoy our performance of an excerpt from Quartet for the End of Time. Messiaen’s work is as powerful today as it was on that bone-chilling night in 1941.

Performance from CELLOHIO featuring Elisabeth Jeremica, Sara Bechtel, Caitlyn Trevor, Clara Davison, Jered Ross, Lissa Reed, Mary Brandal, Sam Johnson, Sarah Troeller, and Suzanne Waters.