Jess Abrahams is an Australian cellist from Sydney, based in London, UK. She is a versatile musician committed to contemporary music-making in collaborative spaces, performing on both modern and baroque cello. Equally at home in small and large ensembles, she has worked in a range of contexts that have all informed her musical interests.

While at the Royal Academy of Music, where she earned both her Bachelor of Music and Master of Arts in performance, Jess studied with Jo Cole and Andrew Skidmore. She has performed as a soloist many times as a scholarship recipient of the Tait Memorial Trust, where she received the Eugénie White Award for consecutive years. Her appearances have included collaborations with notable Australian poets, actors, ballet dancers, opera singers, and fellow instrumentalists.

Jess is a passionate advocate for new music. She commissioned, premiered, and recorded Three (More) Tendril Pieces for Solo Cello by Singaporean composer Elliot Teo in 2022, and co-commissioned Teo’s Three Tendril Pieces for guitar and cello.

Jess is a member of the Allora Ensemble, a group known for its genre-blurring approach to programming, spanning from Argentine tango to more experimental contemporary works. In February 2025, the ensemble opened for Alexis Ffrench to a sold-out Royal Festival Hall audience. In June 2025, the group recorded and filmed two soon-to-be-released tracks at the VOCES8 Centre—an opportunity funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and the Royal Academy of Music.

She also has experience working on screen, appearing in several advertisements and television productions in Australia. Notably, she was featured as an on-screen cellist in the music video for the hit pop duo The Veronicas’ global chart-topping single “You Ruin Me,” which she later performed with them live on The X Factor.

Jess’s orchestral and continuo work spans from historically informed performance to modern orchestral repertoire. Opera Today praised her for her “alert and tasteful recitative accompaniments” in the Royal Academy Opera’s production of Handel’s Ariodante. In 2023, she performed as part of an ensemble with the Ligeti Quartet for a concert of Ligeti’s music at Snape Maltings during the Aldeburgh Festival. Recent highlights include side-by-side projects with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and performances with the Knussen Chamber Orchestra.

Jess performs on a Frank Ravatin cello kindly lent to her by the Royal Academy of Music collection.