Marika Hughes

Marika Hughes is a cellist, singer, songwriter and native New Yorker who hails from a musical family; her grandfather was the great cellist Emanuel Feuermann. Hughes holds dual degrees in political science and cello performance from Barnard College and the Juilliard School, respectively. She has also been a storyteller on NPR’s Moth Radio Hour. Hughes has played with Whitney Houston, Lou Reed, Anthony Braxton, David Byrne, Adele, D’Angelo, Idina Menzel, Taylor Mac, Nels Cline, the Uptown String Quartet, and Henry Threadgill, among many others. She has self-released three albums: The Simplest Thing (2011), Afterlife Music Radio (2011), and New York Nostalgia (2016). She is the founder and co-director of Looking Glass Arts, an artist-led creative residency retreat and recording space in upstate New York that offers artist residencies on the nonprofit’s 15-acre property in their 100-year-old barn studio. Looking Glass Arts prioritizes artists of the Global Majority, democratizing the access to space, time, and surrounding natural beauty critical to artistic growth.