Seventeen-year-old cellist Nicolas Bass has been playing the cello since he was four years old.  His early cello studies began with Deborah Thompson, then continued with Emmanuel Feldman from the age of ten. For the past two years, Nicolas has been a student of Eugene Kim. He attended the New England Conservatory Preparatory School for the past ten years, and he has been a member of several orchestras there. He is currently in the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, which toured Central Europe in 2019. Also in June 2019, he performed a full recital of works by Bach, Debussy, and Tchaikovsky in Williams Hall at NEC. In November 2019, Nicolas won second prize in the NEC Preparatory School Concerto Competition playing the Elgar Concerto. In January 2020 he performed the first movement of the Elgar with the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra.  Earlier in 2019, Nicolas received the Leonard D. Wood 3rd Place Award in the Philharmonic Society of Arlington Young Artist Competition for his performance of Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme. In 2013 Nicolas won first prize in the Roman Totenberg Concerto Competition in his age category. Other prizes include second prize in the 2016 NEC Preparatory School Concerto Competition and honorable mention in the 2018 Brookline Concerto Competition, playing the Saint-Saens Concerto No. 1.  He was also a finalist in the 2018 NEC Preparatory Concerto Competition performing the Boccherini Concerto in B-Flat Major. Nicolas’ summer music studies have included intensive chamber music programs at Berkshire Summer Music, Luzerne Music Camp, Greenwood Junior Music Camp, and Greenwood Senior Music Camp. At NEC,  Nicolas played in a piano trio with two of his friends from 2015 to 2018, performing trios by Beethoven, Schubert, Saint-Saëns, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Shostakovich, and Piazzola. Nicolas has also played in a string quartet at NEC.  He is a rising sophomore at Pennsylvania State University. Nicolas also enjoys baseball, football, drawing, and playing video games with his friends.