Ariel Friedman is a multi-genre cellist, composer, and poet. A winner of the 2020 Women Composers Festival of Hartford's call for scores and a recipient of New England Conservatory's 2018 Alumni Award, she is steeped both in the music of American roots traditions and a broad range of classical repertoire as both a performer and composer. Ariel tours the U.S. and abroad with her sister as Ari & Mia, award-winning songwriters and highly acclaimed as New England’s Americana sister act, and has performed nationally and internationally with many other folk-based groups including Hanneke Cassel, the Sail Away Ladies, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra offshoot ensemble, Classical Tangent. She is the founding cellist of Cardamom Quartet, a Boston-based ensemble engaged in reimagining the traditional canon by performing music exclusively by women.
An advocate of new music and a composer herself, Ariel performs with Boston Modern Orchestra Project and has written music for and collaborated with many ensembles and soloists including Craft Ensemble, Palaver Strings, Box Not Found, pianist Miki Sawada’s Gather Hear project, and the young artists of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute.
In demand as an educator, Ariel has been on faculty at Point Counterpoint, the Northeast Massachusetts Youth Orchestras chamber music faculty, and Brookline Music School. She has taught at music camps and workshops from New England to New Zealand.
As a poet, Ariel is the author of a chapbook, the universe digests her stars (Bottlecap Press, 2024), and her work has been published or is forthcoming in Pangyrus, december, Literary Mama, Lucky Jefferson, and Bodega among others. She is a winner of the 2023 Boston Mayor’s Poetry Program and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets.
Ariel received her Bachelors of Music from Northwestern University in 2008 and her Masters of Music from New England Conservatory in 2011. Her primary teachers have included Hans Jorgen Jensen, Hankus Netsky, Carla Kihlstedt, and Stratis Minakakis.
