Performer Biography

Ari Peraza-Webb

​Nineteen year-old Ari Peraza-Webb is a Venezuelan-American cellist with an affinity for new music, having premiered 6 compositions in 2024 alone. A devoted chamber musician, he is a member of the FaMa Quartet, first prize-winner of the 50th Annual Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, and a member of the Orion’s Bow Trio. Ari currently studies at the Juilliard School, under mentorship of Joel Krosnick and Zvi Plesser. His previous teachers include Laurence Lesser, Hans Jørgen Jensen, Richard Aaron, Sarah Kim, and Alan Rafferty.

Ari made his orchestral debut at age 12 with the Blue Ash-Montgomery Symphony Orchestra, and has made appearances with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, New Albany Symphony Orchestra, and the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra. He has also performed at the Judson Manor in Cleveland as first place winner of the 2018 and 2020 Cleveland Cello Society Competition. Ari was selected as the winner of the Overture Awards in both 2022 and 2023, and the winner of the Mary Alice Cox Award in 2019 and 2023. Most recently, Ari was awarded second prize at the 8thar International Antonio Janigro Competition in Zagreb.

His music has brought him overseas, as an active participant for the 2022 and 2024 biennial Kronberg Academy Masterclasses, in which he studied with Gary Hoffman and Wolfgang Emmanuel Schmidt, respectively. Ari performs on a 1786 Jose Contreras cello, generously loaned by the Juilliard School.