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Performer Bio
Sophie Benn enjoys a multifaceted career as a musicologist, cellist, and educator. She has been hailed for her “brilliant technical prowess” (ClevelandClassical.com), and was named one of moCa Cleveland’s New Agents, a group of 52 “experimenters, catalysts, and change-makers, who are pushing Cleveland forward right now.”
Sophie is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Musicology at Butler University in Indianapolis. She is a frequent performer on faculty recitals at Butler University as well as in chamber music concerts across Indianapolis and the surrounding region. For nine years, she was a proud member of the music scene in Cleveland, Ohio. From 2014-2021, Sophie served as the principal cellist of the chamber orchestra CityMusic Cleveland, and has made concerto appearances with the ensemble. She could also be heard as a core musician of the ensemble Opus 216 and a frequent performer at Classical Revolution Cleveland.
She performs frequently as soloist and chamber musician with colleagues from most of the United States’ prominent period-instrument ensembles, including Apollo’s Fire, Les Delices, the Newberry Consort, and Bourbon Baroque. Drawing on a childhood spent in the ballet studio, she has also appeared as a baroque dancer in productions of Hippolyte et Aricie, Dido and Aeneas and Acis and Galatea. She serves on the board of the Cleveland-based medieval music ensemble Trobár.
As a performer and coordinator of new music, she served as one of the principal cellists of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra in Switzerland and on tour. Sophie has played with numerous contemporary music groups, including Ars Futura and FiveOne Experimental Orchestra, and has premiered work in both the United States and Canada. She has worked with Joel Sachs, Miranda Cuckson, and Marc Ponthus, as well as members of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Alarm Will Sound, Yarn/Wire, and the Kronos Quartet. From 2017-2021, she was a Director of Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project (CUSP), a presenting organization for experimental contemporary musicians and sound artists that she co-founded in 2017.
Sophie holds degrees in cello performance, pedagogy, and musicology from Rice University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Case Western Reserve University. During the 2021-2022 academic year, she taught at Western Kentucky University.