Isaac Pastor-Chermak is a cellist, conductor, and teacher. Educated at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the University of California, Berkeley, he performs and conducts a repertoire spanning 500 years on instruments ranging from baroque cello, violoncello piccolo and viola da gamba to the most experimental electronic instruments. Pastor-Chermak is currently Principal Cellist of Portland Opera and Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony, Associate Principal Cellist of Stockton Symphony, and a member of Santa Barbara Symphony, Dayton Philharmonic, Monterey Symphony, and Santa Cruz Symphony. In the summers, he is an orchestra member at the Eisenstadt Classical Music Festival in Austria.
As a chamber musician, Pastor-Chermak is the cellist of Black Cedar Trio, the only professional flute-cello-guitar ensemble in the country; he frequently partners with pianists Miles Graber and Alison Lee in sonata programs.
In addition to his duties as an orchestral cellist, Pastor-Chermak maintains a vigorous schedule of solo, chamber music, recording, conducting and teaching engagements throughout the United States and abroad. He is known for his marathon performances of Bach's Six Suites for Solo Cello. His recent creative projects have included the complete Beethoven sonatas for cello and piano (with Ms. Lee), and multiple performances of Elliott Carter's sonata for cello and piano (with Mr. Graber). In the 2017-18 season, Pastor-Chermak will perform concertos by C.P.E. Bach and Eugene d'Albert, sonatas by Gershwin, Beethoven, Prokofiev and Chopin, and the complete Bach Suites, all part of another 100-concert season.
Pastor-Chermak is Beelard Foundation Artist-in-Residence at the Young Artists Conservatory of Music in Vacaville, CA, where he teaches cello lessons and directs Solano Junior Strings, a highly selective youth chamber orchestra he founded in 2015. He is a faculty member at Dominican Sisters School of Music in Fremont, CA.
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