Thomas Loewenheim maintains an international career that combines cello performance, conducting, and teaching. He has toured North America, Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East, performing as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician.

A devoted educator, Loewenheim is frequently invited to present master classes both nationally and internationally. He is Professor of Cello and Director of Orchestras at California State University, Fresno, Music Director and conductor of the Youth Orchestras of Fresno, and founding Artistic Director of the FOOSA Festival/Fresno Summer Orchestra Academy.

Noted for his ability to lead any orchestra to peak performance level efficiently and enjoyably, Loewenheim is much in demand on the honor orchestra circuit. His unique combination of old-school reverence for music’s history and new-age passion for neglected and under-appreciated works has led to invitations to conduct throughout the United States, as well as in Europe and Asia. As conductor he has collaborated with numerous soloists, among them violinists Vadim Gluzman, Richard Lin, and Rachel Barton Pine, cellists Lynn Harrell, Clive Greensmith, and Brinton Smith, and pianists Peter Klimo, Steven Vanhauwaert, and Jeremy Denk.

As a cello soloist in his own right, he has most recently premiered Daniel Akiva’s Requests for Cello and Orchestra, a concerto dedicated specifically to Loewenheim. As a chamber musician he has collaborated with a wide range of musicians from cellist Lynn Harrell to violinist Martin Beaver to pianist Evelyne Brancart. Lately, with violinist Limor Toren-Immerman and pianist Peter Klimo, he has founded the Topelli Piano Trio.

Loewenheim has been a guest artist at prominent music festivals around the world, among them the Montecito International Music Festival, the Music in the Mountains Festival and Conservatory in Durango, Colorado, and, in California, both CSU Summer Arts in Fresno, and the Chamber Music Unbound Festival in Mammoth Lakes…as well as his own FOOSA Festival/Fresno Summer Orchestra Academy.

Loewenheim’s discography includes conducted works as well as works for cello solo. Newly released is a CD on the Tonsehen label of Loewenheim conducting Mahler 5 with the FOOSA Philharmonic. Upcoming recordings will feature the same orchestra in two works from the first quarter of the 20th century: Sergei Lyapunov’s Piano Sextet and Ernest Bloch’s Concerto Grosso. An upcoming solo CD features virtuosic works for cello by Bach, Handel, Rózsa, and Ysaÿe.

Loewenheim earned a doctorate in cello performance from the renowned Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, where he studied with Janos Starker and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, and was mentored in conducting by David Effron. He received a master’s degree from the University of Michigan under Erling Blöndal Bengtsson and a bachelor’s degree from the Rubin Academy for Music and Dance in Jerusalem. He plays a Jean Baptiste Vuillaume cello made in 1848.