Efe Baltacıgil

Lauded by the Seattle Times as a “cellist of superb nuances and spontaneous musicality,” Efe Baltacıgil has been principal cello of the Seattle Symphony since fall 2011. From 2003 until then, he was associate principal cello of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Recent highlights include his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle, performing Bottesini’s Duo Concertante alongside his brother Fora, and performances of Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme with the Bilkent Symphony and the Seattle Symphony and of Brahms’s Double Concerto with violinist Juliette Kang and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra.

Baltacıgil has performed a Brahms Sextet with Itzhak Perlman, Midori, Yo-Yo Ma, Pinchas Zukerman, and Jessica Thompson at Carnegie Hall and has participated in Ma’s Silk Road Project. He has also performed the Schumann Cello Concerto with the Curtis Chamber Orchestra, toured with Musicians from Marlboro, and is a member of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society Two.

Named String Player of the Year in Turkey in 2013, Baltacıgil has also received the Peter Jay Sharp Prize, the Washington Performing Arts Society Prize, and first prizes in concerto competitions in Istanbul and New York, as well as in the Allentown (Pennsylvania) Schadt String Competition. He won the 2005 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2006.

Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Baltacıgil started studying the violin at age 5 and changed to the cello at age 7. He received his bachelor’s degree from Mimar Sinan University Conservatory in Istanbul in 1998 and an artist diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 2002, where he studied with Peter Wiley and David Soyer. He was a recipient of the Curtis Institute’s Jacqueline du Pré Scholarship.