Ezra Escobar is a cellist, composer, and electronic music artist.

Biography

Lauded as “vibrant” and “gifted” (Chicago Classical Review), Filipino-American cellist Ezra Escobar made his solo debut at age 16 with the Oistrakh Symphony of Chicago and has since made appearances with the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, Young Steinway Concert Series, Evanston Chamber Music Festival, Chicago Rush Hour Concerts, Lake Forest Civic Orchestra, Waukegan Chamber Music Society, the EstOvest Festival in Turin, Italy, and Chicago WFMT, Living Classical, and Resonance Extra radio. Past collaborators include Victor Asuncion, Renaud Déjardin, the Chamber Choir of London, Naomi Berrill, Francesco Dillon, Claudio Pasceri, kora virtuoso Ballaké Sissoko, and jazz clarinetist Ken Peplowski.

Ezra has performed at venues such as Symphony Center in Chicago, Roundhouse, Alice Tully Hall, Pritzker Pavilion, Ladbroke Hall, Copeland Gallery, Museum of the Home, Eastway Baths, and the Ravinia Festival. He serves as the cellist of the Jasmine Quartet, a London-based string quartet dedicated to expanding the reach of classical music beyond traditional demographics through repertoire that reaches across genres and cultural boundaries. The quartet, who have been mentored by the Marmen & Ligeti quartets, Simon Rowland-Jones, & Cecily Ward at the Royal College of Music and supported by the Hinrichsen Foundation, were shortlisted for the 2026 Alpine Fellowship Music Prize and received the Helen Just & Susan Connell Prize and the Sacconi Quartet Prize as winners of the RCM String Quartet Competition. Recent and upcoming appearances include Roundhouse as part of their 26-27 Rising season, Folklore Hoxton, Karamel, Bell House, Concerts for Charity London, and the Albion Up Close concert series.

Ezra is a resident artist of the Fil-Am Music Foundation, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to promoting exceptional Filipino classical musicians through scholarship assistance and performance opportunities. With the Foundation, he has presented the U.S premieres of works by Filipino composers such as A.J Villanueva, Gabriel Mendoza, and National Artists of the Philippines for Music Antonino Buenaventura, Lucrecia Kasilag & Lucio San Pedro. As a composer, his works have been performed throughout the USA, the UK, and Australia, notably in his hometown of Chicago at Symphony Center and the Ravinia Festival. Other projects include a work for cello, fixed/live electronics, & live coding developed with creative technologist Nell Lang for Peckham Digital’s Festival of Creative Computing and premiered at Copeland Gallery.

Ezra studied with Tanya Carey, Marcy Rosen, Hélène Dautry, and Alexander Chaushian at the Music Institute of Chicago, Mannes School of Music and the Royal College of Music. While at the RCM, he won top prizes in both cello and composition. Additional studies include masterclasses with Johannes Moser, Alisa Weilerstein, Hans Jensen, Timothy Eddy, Marc Coppey, Colin Carr, & Eric-Maria Couturier.

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photo: Sisi Burn