Diana Reid is a cellist, historian, storyteller, and interdisciplinary artist based in Oberlin, Ohio who creates experiences that, by weaving together myriad artistic disciplines and practices, immerse audiences in a more vivid experience of our world. She is the founder and president of the Oberlin Cello Society, an organization that creates cello ensembles, brings guest artists to give masterclasses and performances, and organizes community lecture and alumni networking opportunities for Oberlin cellists. Additionally, she previously led the Carmel Valley Summer Symphony, a nonprofit that provides free, professional-grade music education to hundreds of students across the San Diego area, and co-founded Flowers for the Future, a collaboration between Afghan and US students that facilitated dialogue and relationship-building between countries, advocated for the rights of all Afghan students — especially women and girls, who are banned from school — published a book of Afghan girls’ poetry, and created an online educational program that allows Afghan girls to get an accredited United States high school diploma. For this work, she has been featured in the New York Times. Throughout all of her work, Diana focuses on producing opportunities for artists to share and dialogue about their ideas, talents, and experiences with others in order to reinforce the human connection within and between communities.

Diana is also an award-winning pianist and filmmaker as well as a singer, actress, avid ballet, contra, and swing dancer, and sometimes funny stand-up comedian. She speaks French and is learning Tsalagi. She loves swing jazz, the color green, and every book by Kazuo Ishiguro (her favorite is Klara and the Sun). Diana is an alumna of the Silk Road Global Musician Workshop, Orford Musique Cello Workshop and Contemporary and Composition Workshop, Domaine Forget, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Mostly Modern Festival, the Tanglewood Institute, PRISMA, the Shkolnikova Academy, and ARIA Summer Music Academy. She has worked with and played in masterclasses for cellists Mike Block, Natasha Brofsky, Darrett Adkins, Mickey Katz, Jeffrey Zeigler, Norman Fischer, Matt Haimovitz, Jean-Michel Fonteneau, Yegor Dyachkov, Christine Li, Dave Eggar, Henry Shapard, Evangeline Benedetti, and Walter Gray as well as the Meta4, Dior, and Verona Quartets. Previously, she worked as a principal and section cellist of the San Diego City Ballet Orchestra. She was awarded Honors for her undergraduate History thesis in cultural programming and resistance in the post-WWII United States — one of the only dual-degree students in Oberlin’s history to receive this honor — was awarded the Artz Grant, and has been offered internships as a historian with NASA.