Oak Park resident Andrea Casarrubios is earning recognition for playing music, and for creating it. She is an in-demand cello soloist and an acclaimed composer, who has created commissioned works for world-class orchestras and ensembles.
The title work from her album “Seven” was nominated for a 2025 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. That album featured Casarrubios as cellist and composer, performing seven of her most recent works.
As a guest soloist with the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra in North Carolina, Casarrubios performed the world premiere of “Mirage,” her large-scale concerto for cello and orchestra.
The cellist has won numerous performing awards and received high praise from critics. The New York Times highlighted the cellist’s “gorgeous tone and an edge-of-seat intensity.”
“I am extremely grateful for all of the recognition,” she said.
The native of Spain moved to the United States in 2007, when she was 18, to attend the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. After that, she studied at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. When she completed her studies there, Casarrubios moved to New York before relocating to Oak Park in 2022.
“My parents-in-law live close by and so I knew this area pretty well and loved it,” she said of settling in Oak Park. When she spends time there, she unwinds by taking walks and doing hot yoga.
Casarrubios began her musical training long before she moved to the United States.
“I started with piano when I was two years old,” she said. “Basically, the lessons consisted in climbing up the piano bench and playing a few notes. But I loved it so much.”
When she was five, Casarrubios began studying the cello in addition to the piano. “My brother used to play the violin and I loved that he could play with a bow,” she said, admitting that she chose the cello so she could also play with a bow. She and her brother would play duets but he unfortunately passed away after a car accident two-and-a-half years ago.
Casarrubios began composing early in her musical studies. “At the same time that I was learning the instruments, I was very fortunate to have a piano teacher back in the small town where I grew up who used to encourage me to improvise at the end of each lesson,” Casarrubios explained.
The teacher, who Casarrubios said was a wonderful composer, would give her student a theme at the end of each lesson to which she would compose music.
“It started as a game,” she said, but it turned out to be very valuable lessons. “I learned to play with sound. I learned to be creative early on.” She noted that one of her composing goals is “to create an experience through the music that feels very relevant.” The composer observed that, in relation to the musicians who perform her music, “I want to honor each voice onstage.”
That creativity has been recognized by orchestras across the country. Her compositions have been performed at Carnegie Hall as well as by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Charlotte Symphony Orchestra and the National Philharmonic. They have been broadcast on radio stations in Argentina, Brazil, France, Sweden, Australia and Spain.
Despite a very busy performing schedule, Casarrubios is generally working on several commissions at once. She said that she reserves time to compose, sometimes taking two or three months where she doesn’t perform to completely devote to composing.
“Performing was my main focus for so many years,” she said. “I traveled all the time. I was still writing music but it didn’t occur to me that I could do this as a career.”
Casarrubios still performs but she is delighted that orchestras and ensembles often ask her to play her own pieces now. “I love doing that,” she declared.
Despite her busy schedule, Casarrubios has taught master classes across the United States as well as in Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Spain and China. “I love to help others make their journey a little bit easier than mine,” she explained.
Casarrubios is currently writing a double-cello and percussion concerto that she will be premiering in New York City in June. She is also writing another cello concerto for her first teacher in the United States, Amit Peled, to perform. In addition, she is composing a piece for guitar and strings for a Spanish guitarist, Pablo Sainz Villegas, to perform in Texas and Spain.
“I’m incredibly grateful for the people who have supported my voice and believed in it — especially the commissions — because it’s thanks to them that I’m definitely more of a composer now,” she said.
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.