By Rich Copley
Contributing Writer

Ania Lewis has studied with some of the top cello teachers in the United States, if not the world. She has performed in venues such as Lincoln Center and Musikverein in Vienna and in some of the nation’s top orchestras including Cleveland and Philadelphia. After graduating from the vaunted Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, the Lexington native has landed a plum position in one of the nation’s top orchestras.

Despite all the education and experience, Lewis sometimes goes back to the basics. The proper way to hold the bow. The structure of the cello. Finger techniques. The names of the strings. She learned those basics from her first cello teacher, Clyde Beavers, in Lexington.

“He would turn a lot of things into like a game,” Lewis recalled during a recent phone conversation. “I remember having a lesson where I would have to like name a certain part of the cello, and if I took too long or didn’t get it right, he would ding a bell — something to keep six-year-olds entertained.

“I still go back to that today. And if I’m noticing tension in my bow hold or something, I go back to the basics of, OK, this is where this finger goes, and this is what I was taught … just going back to those few lessons with him that I still remember very well.”

Lewis will be center stage on opening night of the Lexington Philharmonic’s 65^th season on September 18, just feet from Beavers, the Phil’s assistant principal cellist. 

“It was obvious that she possessed excellent skills and was capable of learning at a higher level than most cellists,” Beavers recalled in an email. “As a graduate of The Juilliard School, we would observe pre-college students preparing for their ear training classes as well as their private lessons and orchestra rehearsals. Ania’s resolve reminded me of the seriousness of these students. She desired to read music in her introductory lessons and would work to perfect her musical skills.”

Beavers said it was important to build a solid technical foundation for Lewis, adding, “I am happy to be a part of Ania’s musical journey and look forward to hearing and seeing her maturation as a budding artist with the LexPhil during this upcoming week.”

Lewis’ time with Beavers was brief. A couple of years after she began studying cello at age 6, she moved with her family to Cleveland.

Her parents were from Cleveland, and that’s where she had gotten the first inkling that she wanted to play the cello. The Cleveland Orchestra cellist Martha Baldwin was a family friend, and on a trip to Cleveland while they were living in Kentucky, Lewis saw Baldwin’s cello and told her parents she wanted one for her birthday. 

At that time, Lewis’ family lived in Versailles and she attended Mary Queen of the Holy Rosary elementary school in Lexington. Her cello playing progressed quickly enough that she was briefly in the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra.

“I remember I needed a special chair because my legs wouldn’t reach the floor in the normal chairs,” Lewis said.

When the family moved to Cleveland, Baldwin became Lewis’ cello teacher.

“Having this figure in my life that plays the cello was something that a little kid looks up to,” Lewis said. “But now I think of the cello and music in general as something to express my voice as a musician when maybe words can’t say everything that I want to say. The cello, specifically, I just love the timbre of it, and I love how similar it is to the human voice range.”

Lewis was recently reminded how that passion and the community of an orchestra can combine beautifully when she saw the Philadelphia Orchestra play Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, which, coincidentally, will close the Lexington Philharmonic’s season April 17, 2027.

“I think a lot of the audience members were tearing up, but I was definitely tearing up,” Lewis said. “It’s just something that it kind of goes beyond words, and it’s also very special when 100 people on stage all have the same goal of making a piece of music sound cohesive and effective and something very special.”

It reaffirmed the philosophy of Peter Wiley, chair of cello performance at the Curtis Institute of Music. “I’ve probably heard it multiple times a semester,” Lewis said. “He always says, ‘You’re a human first, a musician second, and a cellist third.’ So, the technique and the cellistic side of things, that all goes to the side. But the priority is just making the audience feel something from the music and realizing that you’re a human and a musician before worrying about all the technique."

Opening night for the Philharmonic, Lewis will have a piece in her hands famous for its depth of emotion. Sir Edward Elgar wrote his Cello Concerto in the aftermath of World War I in seclusion, contemplating a changing world and his changing place in it.

It had a disastrous premiere in 1919 with an under-rehearsed orchestra but steadily gained appreciation among cellists and the public, particularly following Jacqueline du Pré’s 1965 recording of the work with the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor John Barbirolli.

Lewis first encountered the concerto when she was 14 and was thrilled to learn she would be playing it with the Philharmonic for this season’s premiere.

“There’s so much longing, feeling, and yearning and wanting, but also there’s happiness and lightness, and each of the movements are slightly different, and it is in a minor key,” Lewis said.  “There are moments in the later movements to kind of breathe, and there’s a lot of hope that arises. That is such a special feeling to have this sense of hope after coming out of a sad or down feeling, and I think a lot of people experience something like that in life, and it’s special to be able to play a piece of music that reflects that and maybe reminds people of the hope that can come from a bad situation.

“When I found out that I would get to play it again this year, I was so excited, and I started learning it right away. And that was the only thing I would play for a long time this past year in school, so my teachers may have gotten tired of it, but I did not.”

After graduating from Curtis in 2025, Lewis began work on a master’s degree, but plans changed. Earlier this year, she was named assistant principal cellist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

As she spoke, Lewis was settling into her new home of Cincinnati, preparing for a weekend playing in the live orchestral accompaniment of La La Land.

“I’m looking forward to the variety of programming that Cincinnati does, and I think a lot of other orchestras don't take advantage of this as much,” Lewis said. “Cincinnati has ballet performances. They do the opera performances in the summer. They have subscription concerts. They do a lot of pop concerts as well.

“The assistant principal spot is really exciting for me because I had a lot of leading experience in school, and it was something that I really liked doing. But it’s also not throwing me in too deep.”

Before things get too geared up in Cincy, Lewis has a trip down I-75. She is the latest in a line of Lexington natives the Philharmonic has spotlighted since Mélisse Brunet became Music Director in 2022. 

“We love having opportunities to bring musicians with Central Kentucky roots back to perform with the Lexington Philharmonic,” Philharmonic executive director Brooke Raby said. “It gives our audiences a chance to celebrate artists who began their musical lives here and have gone on to remarkable careers, while also showing young musicians in our community what’s possible. A life in music can take many different forms, and artists like Ania are a wonderful reminder that exceptional musicians don’t just come to Central Kentucky — they come from here, too.”

For Lewis, it will be a reunion with the teacher who got her started, as well as her piano teacher, Rebecca Kiekenapp, also a Philharmonic cellist.

“I’m really excited,” Lewis said. “I look much different than I did when I was six, so I hope they recognize me.”

On opening night in Lexington, she’ll be hard to miss.

Opening Night: New World

The Lexington Philharmonic’s 65^th season opening concert conducted by Mélisse Brunet and featuring cello soloist Ania Lewis performing Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto along with Clarice Assad’s Baião ’n Blues and Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World.

7:30 p.m. September 18 in the Singletary Center for the Arts Concert Hall, 405 Rose St. Tickets are $30 to $80 adults and $10 to $20 for youth and students, at lexphil.org.

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Rich Copley is a Lexington-based writer and photographer who has enjoyed a more than 30-year career as an arts and culture journalist, including 20 years as a staff writer and editor for the Lexington Herald-Leader.