Cellist and Violist da Gamba Chelsea Bernstein is a spirited and dynamic musician who specializes in the historically informed performance of music from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. 

Described as “brimming with confidence” (Washington Classical Review) on stage, Chelsea enjoys an active and varied performing career. She appears regularly as a multi-instrumentalist with the American Bach Soloists, Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival, Smithsonian Chamber Music Society, Washington Performing Arts, Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, Smithsonian at Little Washington, Elm City Consort, Gotham Early Music Scene, and Music Before 1800 concert series. Most recently, she shared the stage with Maestro William Christie of Les Arts Florissants as solo continuo cellist for Handel’s glorious Il Trionfo del Tempo et Disinganno at Lincoln Center and embarked on a concert tour of the Middle East with the Apple Hill String Quartet.  

Chelsea holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in modern cello from the University of Maryland School of Music. Her dissertation concerns the influence of the vast canon of solo repertoire from France’s bass-viol tradition on Johann Sebastian Bach’s compositions for unaccompanied cello. Chelsea also holds a Master’s degree in Historical Performance from The Juilliard School, where she double majored in baroque cello and viola da gamba.

Interested in drawing connections, building community, and serving those less advantaged, Chelsea is the resident cellist in the Newport String Project, a performing and teaching initiative in Newport, Rhode Island. She is also a founding member of the Arrow Quartet, a historical string quartet interested in breathing new life into the established canon and reviving pieces less familiar. 

Chelsea serves on the music faculties of Salve Regina University and St. George’s School, both in Newport, Rhode Island.

She performs on an Arthur Richardson modern cello, 1924, Kuzaya Sato viola da gamba, 1984, and a Timothy Johnson baroque cello, 2021.