Bela Emerson

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"Excellent: layers of gorgeous, mesmerising, rumbling hooks" BBC Radio 3
Bela Emerson is an innovative electric cello player who performs passionate, evocative and spontaneously-composed solo pieces using live electronic processing, influenced by her work in dance, pop, punk, rock, electronica, swing & gypsy. Trained classically, in jazz, and improvisation, her music harnesses many different genres whilst creating soundworlds which are all her own.

Bela’s performances are the stuff of legend: intense and exhilarating - her command of her instrument and ability to attune to the uniqueness of the moment combine to produce performances which are remarkably different and always spellbinding, both musically and visually. She builds layers of rhythm and sound from every part of her instrument: sounds are looped, take on lives of their own, bounce off each other... The effect, as anyone who’s heard her will testify, is mesmerising.

Bela is a prolific and well-travelled performer who has been touring extensively as a headline act since 2003 in the UK, Europe, and North America, in venues as diverse as London’s Royal Courts of Justice & Vortex jazz club, Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion, Islington’s Union Chapel, Brighton’s Komedia & St.George’s Church, Birmingham’s Town Hall; she’s also thrilled crowds at Glastonbury, Supersonic, Bestival, Aldeburgh, Shambala and The Big Chill festival amongst many others. Her four solo CD & vinyl releases are broadcast extensively on national BBC radio, Resonance and countless mainland European and web stations (such as Bayerischer Rundfunk, RAI 3, and Totally Radio).

Bela has collaborated with innumerable other musicians, such as Tim Exile, The Damned, British Sea Power, Nick Pynn, The Pipettes’ Bobby Barry, The Don Bradmans, Loop’s John Wills, Lianne Hall (including four John Peel sessions for BBC Radio 1), and with percussion company STOMP’s Lost and Found Orchestra’s performance runs at Sydney Opera House & Royal Festival Hall. She plays with dancers, circus performers, live painters and for film (with award-winning Czech film-maker Tereza Buskova, SchMovies & artist Marco Crivello), as well as curating the live soundtrack-to-film show Movietronica.

If anyone really does live by those Things To Do Before You Die lists, slot 'see Bela Emerson live' somewhere into the top 50 Venue

Haunting Time Out London

Sonic textures rub up against each other to the extent that the instrument's true voice is unleashed - Bela Emerson makes her cello speak in tongues The Sound Projector

A freewheeling engine of grinding physical energy Brighton Life

Cello played with passion and intensity Daily Mirror

"Japanese Twins"

"Marco"