Education
M.M. in Cello Performance and Literature, Eastman School of Music, B.M. in Cello Performance, Rice University
Biography
Based in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, Lucas Button is a cellist and teacher active throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. He is a member of the Virginia Symphony and the Cape Symphony and often performs with the Allentown Symphony, Albany Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, and Symphoria (Syracuse, NY). Lucas has performed at the Hamptons Festival of Music and in 2024 will appear at the Bellingham Festival in Washington state. He is a former member of The Orchestra Now (TŌN), where he performed Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote as soloist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lucas has previously performed as soloist with the Syracuse, Schenectady, and Catskill Symphonies.
In May of 2021, Lucas collaborated with composers Rodney Lister and Miles Friday in performances of new works for solo cello. The project was a fundraising campaign for the National Alliance on Mental Illness in observance of Mental Health Awareness Month. Lucas has also performed chamber music in Rochester and Syracuse for If Music Be The Food, a benefit concert series in support of the hungry in communities across the United States. His chamber music appearances also include the Society for New Music in Syracuse, Society for Chamber Music in Rochester, and performances at the summer festivals at Tanglewood in Massachusetts and Stringwood in Minnesota and Iowa. Lucas can also be spotted in an orchestra scene in season one of the HBO series The Gilded Age.
Lucas is an adjunct faculty member at Bard College and in 2021 he coached the cellists of the National Association for Music Education’s All-Eastern orchestra. Lucas has been awarded the Samuel Hayes Memorial Cello Award from the Tanglewood Music Center and the Celentano Award for Excellence in Chamber Music from the Eastman School of Music. His cello mentors include Steven Doane, Rosemary Elliott, and Norman Fischer, and he has studied chamber music with members of the Chiara, Concord, Juilliard, and Ying quartets. In addition to his professional life, Lucas is a home coffee roaster and novice birdwatcher.