By Andrew Alonzo | aalonzo@claremont-courier.com

Sunday will be especially meaningful for Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra cellist Brent Samuel. He will return to his hometown and the group his parents founded, helping kick off Claremont Young Musicians Orchestra’s 35th season.

Samuel is the featured soloist for the free and open to the public 7 p.m. concert, performing Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No.1 Sunday, January 14 at Bridges Hall of Music, 150 E. Fourth St., Claremont. Doors open at 6:30.

Born in Rowland Heights on February 13, 1971, Samuel and his family moved to Claremont in the late 1970s. He grew up in a house filled with music. His parents, Roger and Janet Samuel, founded CYMO in 1989.

They were also both music teachers for local school districts, teaching thousands of youngsters to play, as well as their children, Greg, Gail, and Brent.

“Music survives by people learning about it and learning how to do it,” Samuel said. “The fact that [my parents] taught all these thousands of kids how to play music and how to appreciate music … I just think that’s very important, and I’m very, very grateful for that.”

Los Angeles Philharmonic cellist and CHS grad Brent Samuel performs with Claremont Young Musician Orchestra at 7 p.m. Sunday at Bridges Hall of Music. Photo/courtesy of Ryan Hunter

Now 52, Samuel has performed more than 3,000 concerts with LA Phil over the last 24 years, roughly three per week during the group’s 42-week concert season.

He met his wife, Shirley Ho, a violist, when they were attending The Juilliard School in New York City. They married in 2002 and have two daughters, Zoey and Maya. Always a focused, professional musician, Shirley’s death in 2021, shifted his priorities.

“There’s family and kids,” he said. “I still make sure I’m doing my job well.”

Samuel has been on sabbatical since last September.

“This is a strange year for me,” he said. Being 17, “Zoey’s right in the middle of all the college application stuff,” Maya, 13, an eighth grader, will start high school in the fall.

After appearing with CYMO Sunday, he will be concentrating on helping his daughters prepare for the next big steps in their lives.

Samuel took up the cello at age 7. The story goes that he heard the sound of it on the radio and showed interest, and his mother then brought a cello home for him.

He took lessons from Bernard Jones and Rick Mooney, who died last year, as well as Mooney’s former teacher, the late Eleonore Schoenfeld, an instructor at the University of Southern California. Lessons with Schoenfeld, who he described as a “tough’ and “very serious teacher,” began during his years at El Roble Intermediate School.

He progressed rapidly, earning high praise from his instructors and parents. Despite that early success, he had a period of “early teen grumpiness,” questioning if playing the cello was really what he wanted to do. But by eighth grade he was focused on honing his cello skills.

He continued learning from Schoenfeld throughout his time at Claremont High School, practicing three to four hours a day on top of his extracurricular activities.

He graduated from CHS in 1989 and enrolled at USC, where he continued learning from Schoenfeld. After earning a bachelor’s degree he moved to New York City to attend Juilliard, where he studied under Joel Krosnick, graduating with a master’s degree in music in 1995.

After Juilliard, Samuel remained in New York, taking freelance gigs as a cellist at weddings, parties, and with local orchestras, and teaching to private students.

“Freelance work is hard work,” he said. “That got really hard and really frustrating and so I started to take orchestra auditions.”

He auditioned for six orchestras around the country before landing a job in October 1999 with LA Philharmonic, his final stop. It was a grueling job search, but Samuel was ecstatic to get the gig with the company he had grown up with.

“You see what’s available and you say, ‘Okay there’s an audition in St. Louis and Chicago and Portland and LA.’ And so you take those auditions and you’re just sort of prepared to move wherever.” LA Phil “was my hometown orchestra. My parents would regularly take the three kids to concerts at the Music Center downtown when we were little. It was just very lucky that I got the job in LA … where I grew up and had family.”

Samuel is the featured soloist as Claremont Young Musicians Orchestra kicks off its 35th season with a free and open to the public concert at 7 p.m. Sunday, January 14 at Bridges Hall of Music, 150 E. Fourth St., Claremont. Doors open at 6:30. More info is at cymo.org.