Hayden Idson is 14 years old and will be a ninth-grader this coming school year. He began his cello studies at the age of four and a half, and he is a student of Paul Katz and Yehuda Hanani. His former teachers include Ronald Lowry, Michael Bonner, and Sandy Kiefer. Hayden appeared as a soloist for the first time at the age of 10, playing the first two movements of Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor with the Waltham Philharmonic Orchestra. In the following year, he performed Tchaikovsky’s Pezzo Capriccioso with both the Sharon Community Chamber Orchestra and the Brockton Symphony Orchestra. In 2017, he was the winner of the Wellesley Symphony Orchestra Young Soloist Competition and Waltham Philharmonic Concerto Competition and was invited to play Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 with both orchestras in 2018. Earlier this year, he won the Concord Orchestra’s Ehlers Young Artist Competition and performed Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations with the orchestra. In his free time, Hayden likes to learn about music history and, oddly enough, practice scales!