Alan Toda-Ambaras

Cellist Alan Toda-Ambaras is the recipient of the Prize for Most Promising Contestant at the 2005 Rostropovich International Cello Competition in Paris.

A resident of Boston, Alan is active as both a soloist and a chamber musician.  He has performed with Midori, Yo-Yo Ma, Sandeep Das, and other members of the Silk Road Ensemble, the Borromeo Quartet, the Parker Quartet, the Boston Trio, and has appeared twice as a soloist with the North Carolina Symphony.  Recent appearances include performances in Tokyo's Ohji Hall and Zojoji Temple; Osaka's Phoenix Hall; the National Music Academy in Vietnam; the Massachusetts State Hall, the Taos Music Festival, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Harvard University's Paine Hall, and the New England Conservatory, where his ensemble – The Frost Piano Quartet – made its Jordan Hall debut in May 2014.  He has been featured on French television and in several European documentaries due to his participation in the Rostropovich Competition; he has also been heard on NPR's From The Top program, New York's WKCR Classical station, and Boston’s Neighborhood News Network.  Alan is an avid explorer of new music, and is the dedicatee and premiere performer of Trevor Bača's "Huitzil" for solo cello and Stephanie Ann Boyd's Tekton cello concerto, amongst other pieces.  He performed the latter with Boston’s Eureka Ensemble in May 2017.    

A graduate of the Harvard-New England Conservatory Dual Degree Program, Alan enjoyed studying the evolving significance of human gesture and physicality in modern and postmodern painting.  Alan has a B.A. in History of Art and Architecture from Harvard and an M.M. from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Laurence Lesser.

Alan is passionate about engaging with communities through performances and discussions about the arts and humanities in modern society. He is the co-founder of the interdisciplinary music organization Project LENS (experiencelens.com); and co-founder, acting board chair, and cellist for the Eureka Ensemble (eurekaensemble.org), a young social action-oriented Boston music organization. During the 2018-19 season, Alan was the cellist in Midori's Music Sharing quartet program, through which they conducted cultural exchange and social service performances at assisted living centers and schools throughout Vietnam and Japan.  In June of 2021, he was in another Music Sharing quartet with Midori to record programs that were streamed virtually throughout Japan.

When not working in music, Alan is busy serving as the General Coordinator for the Boston office of the Japan-America Academic Center, in which capacity he conducts both virtual and in-person workshops for Japanese high school students (in English) on liberal arts topics meant to foster students' critical thinking skills and self-expression.  As part of this same job, Alan works closely with students and lecturers from Harvard, MIT, and elsewhere to create cultural immersion programs for Japanese high schoolers as well.