Shasta Ellenbogen is a truly modern artist who prides herself on integrity and innovation. Equally talented as a classical musician and as an improviser, her remarkable flexibility, intuition, and creativity in music-making sets her apart from her peers. Leaving Canada at the age of 17, Shasta studied the viola at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. However, after three years in the conservatory system, she felt unsatisfied with its approach and decided to pursue the instrument without a teacher. Refusing a large grant from her home country to finish her degree in London, she instead found a job teaching at a newly-founded Western music school in Chennai, India. For one year, she taught viola, music theory, and solfege to children, teens, and adults (and was in a few Bollywood movies, too). She settled in Berlin in 2011, and since then, has been working freelance as a soloist and chamber musician,  and as an improviser within the European free music scene. She has won prizes at several international competitions in Germany, Holland, Austria, and Canada, and is also a keen writer, posting a regular blog with essays on a wide variety of topics on her website. Although her heart is loyal to the rich challenges of classical music, as an artist she is equally interested in all mediums of communication. She believes what affects people in art, by its very nature, goes far beyond technical mastery; that communication is at its most effective when the audience feels that they have witnessed the artist’s truest, purest, and most private self.