He was educated first at the Curtis Institute of Music as a student of Orlando Cole and then the New England Conservatory.
[1] He took a year's sabbatical from the LA Phil in 2011 to teach full-time at Indiana University's Jacob School of Music.
[3] Musicians he has collaborated with include Emanuel Ax, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Mitsuko Uchida, and the Emerson String Quartet.
[6][7] It was discovered in a dumpster by Melanie Stevens, a thirty-year-old nurse, after a home surveillance video from across the street showed the cello being lifted by a clumsy thief on a bicycle at around 6:30 am.
[7][8][9] Stevens initially asked her boyfriend to turn it into a CD cabinet, though a week and a half later, she caught a news report about the missing cello and the $50,000 reward for its return.