About

Coleman Itzkoff is a cellist and performer with an omnivorous artistic appetite. His work moves between concert halls, theaters, dance stages, and film, driven by curiosity and a readiness to enter unfamiliar territory. He is as drawn to the intimacy of chamber music and the invention of a continuo band as to the demands of a concerto or a role in a theater or dance company. A founding member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) and a core member of Ruckus and Twelfth Night, he has helped create a body of work spanning new commissions and collaborations, reimagined Baroque repertoire, and theatrical productions in which he performs as an instrumentalist, actor, and dancer.

Highlights of his 2026–27 season include his Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra debut with Anthony Marwood in Christopher Cerrone’s double concerto Selah, following their world premiere of the work with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in May 2026. At The Frick Collection, he premieres a new work written for him by Matthew Aucoin, performing with the composer at the piano. He appears as a cello soloist in Alysa Pires’s new ballet for New York City Ballet, performing music from Jocelyn Morlock’s Aeromancy, and joins Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber for a new creation with GöteborgsOperans Danskompani. Other engagements include concerto performances with Sinfonia Gulf Coast and the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, and Handel’s Deidamia with Ruckus at Hudson Hall.

Since AMOC’s founding in 2017, Coleman has participated in the development and performance of much of its repertoire, including the company’s music directorship of the 2022 Ojai Music Festival and its 2025 Run AMOC* Festival at Lincoln Center. His projects with the company include Matthew Aucoin’s theatrical oratorios The No One’s Rose and Music for New Bodies; The Comet / Poppea, conceived and directed by Yuval Sharon, which juxtaposes a new opera by George Lewis with Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea; Doug Balliett’s Rome Is Falling, an irreverent rock opera about the absurdities of power and imperial collapse; and Carolyn Chen’s How to Fall Apart, an exploration of entropy through music, text, and movement for two musicians and three dancers. He has also performed in El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered, Julia Bullock’s conception of John Adams’s oratorio, and in Gerard & Kelly’s Gay Guerrilla, an exploration of Julius Eastman’s music at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

His work with choreographers and partners Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber has developed over years of close collaboration and friendship. In addition to Lost Mountain, Broken Theater, and The Cello Player, he appeared in their Seven Scenes at Little Island, with music by Ringdown, the duo of Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee Parpan. For Procession, their full-length creation for the National Ballet of Canada, he served as music coordinator, arranger, and orchestrator, and performed onstage as a solo cellist (and occasional dancer) alongside mezzo-soprano Rachael Wilson. The production premiered in Toronto in November 2025, traveled to Ottawa’s National Arts Centre in April 2026, and returns to the company’s repertoire in November 2027. Their latest collaboration brings him to GöteborgsOperans Danskompani for a new work in the 2026–27 season.

With Ruckus, “the world’s only period-instrument rock band,” Coleman has helped shape and tour programs including Fly the Coop, an exploration of Bach’s sonatas and preludes with flutist Emi Ferguson; By George!, which brings together new arrangements of Ligeti’s Musica ricercata and Telemann’s flute fantasias; and Strawberry Fields, pairing Handel’s trio sonatas with Ignatius Sancho’s country dances. He also performs in the ensemble’s Handel opera productions at Hudson Hall, including R. B. Schlather’s Giulio Cesare. His work with Twelfth Night includes its Carnegie Hall debut program, Elemental, and performances of Handel’s Aminta e Fillide and Apollo e Dafne. Coleman enjoys continuo playing as a form of collective invention, shaping bass lines, textures, and instrumental colors in conversation with his fellow players.

Alongside his exploration of historical performance, creating new music is central to Coleman’s artistic life. His work with living composers has ranged from Jörg Widmann, Brett Dean, Tan Dun, Vivian Fung, and Steven Mackey to the sustained collaborations with Matthew Aucoin, Doug Balliett, and Michael Hersch that have helped shape his career. His projects include the premiere of Christopher Cerrone’s Selah with Anthony Marwood and music written for him by Nico Muhly for Bobbi Jene Smith’s Ways of Listening. His association with Hersch encompasses the unaccompanied cello sonatas, the premiere performances of the opera and we, each, and Carrion-Miles to Purgatory, performed with Miranda Cuckson at TIME in 2026. Working with composers as a piece takes shape informs his approach to older repertoire: the score becomes an invitation to inquiry, and even familiar music retains the possibility of discovery. Through these exchanges, he participates both in expanding the cello’s repertoire and in keeping its inherited traditions open to reinvention.

Chamber music began at home in Cincinnati, where Coleman grew up reading quartets with his violinist parents. That early experience developed through Greenwood Music Camp and later through La Jolla SummerFest, the Yellow Barn Music Festival, and the Marlboro Music Festival. His chamber performances have taken him to Caramoor, Camerata Pacifica, UKARIA, and the Lakes Area, Four Seasons, and Valley of the Moon music festivals. In February 2026, he made his Wigmore Hall debut with Anthony Marwood and Aleksandar Madžar in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio.

Coleman has given masterclasses at the Colburn School and Rice University, helped lead AMOC workshops at Harvard, and taught in Virginia Tech’s summer chamber music program. He joined the faculty of Yellow Barn in 2026. A regular participant in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s education programs, he returns in 2026–27 for CMS Kids, Meet the Music!, and Chamber Music Beginnings. His work beyond the concert hall includes individual performances for hospital patients through Project: Music Heals Us and performing during the reading of names at the 25th anniversary commemoration at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Now based in New York, Coleman began playing cello at four. He owes much of his musical formation to the generosity and guidance of his teachers Eric Kim, Desmond Hoebig, Ralph Kirshbaum, and Timothy Eddy. Coleman holds degrees from Rice University and the University of Southern California, and an Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School.