Starla Breshears, cellist, age 17, is a pre-college student and a Joseph Chan Full-Scholarship recipient at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, studying cello with Richard Aaron. She began studying cello at age 3 with Yoshie Muratani and studied with Jean Michel Fonteneau at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for 10 years. Starla has been coached by Christine Walevska and Sergei Riabtchenko and has performed for masterclasses with Sheku Kanneh Mason, Alisa Weilerstein and Amit Peled.

Starla has soloed with 18 different orchestras since the age of 6 including the California Youth Symphony, Kalamazoo Junior Symphony, Palo Alto Philharmonic, Symphony Parnassus, and the Nova Vista Symphony. Starla is a prize winner of the Stulberg International String Competition and Johansen International Competition and has won 1st prize in over a dozen solo competitions including ASTA State Solo Competition, Pacific Musical Society & Foundation Competition, and Grand Prize in the Diablo Valley College / Holy Names University Young Artist Competition.

Starla’s sibling string quartet, the Breshears String Quartet, has been featured twice on the Violin Channel as Rising Star of the Week and on From the Top. The Quartet won 1st Prize in the 2023 Piero Farulli International Competition for Young String Quartets and received the silver medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition in 2024.

As one of the youngest Beares International Violin Society Young Artists, Starla was the loan recipient of a 1/2 size 19th century Hill cello and a 3/4 size 1808 Lorenzo Ventapane. Starla has participated in the Yellow Barn Young Artists program, Greenwood music camp, and Accademia Musicale Chigiana. Next year, Starla will begin studying with Clive Greensmith at the Colburn Music Academy.