The official podcast of the Cello Museum.
Through conversations with performers, scholars, makers, and innovators, the Cello Museum Podcast explores the past, present, and future of the cello. Hosted by Dr. Brenda Neece and members of the Cello Museum team, each episode highlights the artistry, ideas, and individuals shaping the cello world today.
Cello Museum founder and curator, Dr. Brenda Neece, DPhil (Oxon.), is a cellist and a researcher specializing in the history of the cello. Before starting the Cello Museum in the autumn of 2019, she worked as a freelancer and served for just over a decade as the first curator of the musical instrument collections at Duke University. In addition to playing the cello, doing cello research, and writing about cellos, she enjoys experimenting with variant cellos.
Dr. Jonathan Simmons performs internationally as a cello soloist, chamber and orchestral musician, currently based in Greenville, SC. In the USA he toured North Carolina as cellist of the UNCG Graduate String Quartet and internationally he performed in South Africa at the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival. He has soloed with orchestras in multiple states including giving the USA premiere of Rudolf Matz’s Concerto in Modo Antico. Jonathan is a researcher for the Cello Museum. He serves on the faculty of Bob Jones University, Presbyterian College , and the Orion Chamber Music Society String Camp (Troy, MI) and his teaching experience includes teaching live online lessons to students as far away as Australia. To learn more, read Jonathan’s bio and visit his YouTube channel.
Composer, music producer, arranger, music educator, and music minister Daniel DiMarino brings a broad skill set to the world of music. His aptitude for music across genres, media, and ensemble types has allowed him the privilege of contributing to a variety of projects. As a music minister, music curriculum consultant for Duolingo, a published arranger of sacred and educational string music, a trailer music producer, and a freelance mixer and custom music composer, DiMarino’s musical voice is versatile and he is constantly striving to deliver excellence and professionalism in his work.
DiMarino holds a music composition and violin performance degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music. He also studied film scoring at the IU Jacobs School of Music.
DiMarino serves as the Minister of Music at Saving Grace Bible Church in Venice, Florida where he hopes to lead and grow the music ministry over the next several years.
Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason lives in Nottingham and is a former lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham. Her memoir, House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons, won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Storytelling Award in 2021 and the Non-Fiction prize in the 2022 Indie Book Awards. Her second book, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, released in May 2025, explores what it means to grow up as a Black artist today and was long-listed for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.
Kadiatu and her husband, Stuart, have seven children, all classical musicians. The family has appeared in TV documentaries and co-presented The Kanneh-Mason Family Takeover for Classic FM. Kadiatu is an advocate for music education, diversity, inclusion, regional music-making, and access to the arts, and she continues to write, speak, and lecture across the UK.
Cellist Inbal Megiddo has performed as soloist with many of the great orchestras and in major concert halls around the world. Maestro Zubin Mehta describes her as “an extremely talented, very musical musician.” Her performance at the Lincoln Center in New York was hailed by the press as having “magical expression and technical expertise.” She has a “warm lustrous communicative way... the performance was sincerity personified!”
Kittie Lambton is a writer, cellist, and ABRSM Music Theory online tutor based in Scotland. She is passionate about writing books, teaching music, and exploring how music shapes memory, everyday life, shared heritage, and culture.
Through her books, Lambton considers our relationship with music and its power to connect people across generations. She is also a strong advocate for early music education.