Cellist Dr. SERA SMOLEN is a soloist, collaborator, chamber musician, improviser, orchestral musician and recording artist.  She is an active performer of numerous genres of music, including four centuries of classical music. She was a longstanding member of the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, where she premiered new music by many composers.  As a committed improviser, she  has collaborated with dancers, sculptors, painters, poets, and all kinds of musicians around the world.  She composes and records original music with her husband, Tom Mank with whom she toured Netherlands and Belgium numerous times. She has collaborated with Cymthia Stevens/INSITU since 2022.

Smolen received her PhD in Music Education from the Union Institute in 2000, with graduate study at Ithaca College and Cornell University. She currently teaches at Opus Ithaca School of Music in Ithaca NY.  She is a frequent guest clinician in Europe, the US and Canada for workshops and teacher training seminars covering pedagogies of improvisation and composition for developing string players. She has taught at Mansfield University, Alfred University, Hobart and William Smith College, the Kanack School in Rochester NY, and was the assistant director of New Directions Cello Festival for 20 years.