Orlando Cela

Venezuelan-born musician Orlando Cela is committed to giving audiences lively performances that open new worlds of experience to them. Known for his engaging performance style using imaginative programming, he has premiered over 100 works both as a flutist and a conductor. 

As a flutist, Cela has performed at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Center for New Music and Technologies at the University of California, Berkeley. His credits abroad include concerts at the Zentrum Danziger (Berlin), the Espace des Femmes (Paris), and at the Musikverein (Vienna). He has collaborated with flutist Paula Robison, tabla player Samir Chatterjee, harpsichordist John Gibbons, and shen (mouth organ) virtuoso Hu Jianbing. As former music director for the Willow Flute Ensemble, he arranged over 100 works from the Baroque to the contemporary, and he recently launched FluteLab, an online forum in which he answers composers’ questions about writing for the flute with commentaries and video clips.

As a conductor, Cela launched the orchestral department at Ningbo University in China and conducting the inaugural concert of the Ningbo City Symphony Orchestra. In the U.S., he has worked with orchestras and choruses at Randolph College and the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and guest conducted the Marquette Symphony Orchestra, the Northern Michigan State University Orchestra, and the Brandeis New Music Ensemble. He is currently the music director and conductor of the Arlington Philharmonic Orchestra and the orchestra of the Governor’s School of North Carolina.

A dedicated music educator, Cela is known for his dynamic workshops and lectures at places such as Tulane University, Brandeis University, the Central Conservatory of Music in China, and the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart in Germany, as well as at flute festivals in Ithaca and Syracuse, New York, and at Shanghai Normal University. In addition to teaching at Berklee, he teaches world music at Middlesex Community College.