Margo Tatgenhorst Drakos is one of the most recognized young cellists in America. She has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia. In April 2007 Ms. Drakos was appointed Chief Operating Officer of InstantEncore.com, a digital music media site for live classical music. Ms. Drakos is also on the cello faculty of the Manhattan School of Music while maintaining an active performance career. Ms. Drakos served as the cellist of the American String Quartet from 2002–2006. During her time with the quartet, she recorded the Richard Danielpour’s String Quartets for Arabesque Records. Ms. Drakos has served as Associate/Assistant Principal Cellist of the Pittsburgh Symphony and Principal Cellist of the San Diego and Oregon Symphonies.
 Margo has pursued a variety of musical interests since her childhood. At age five she first captured attention as a singer on a White Castle commercial, resulting in numerous national radio and television commercials ranging from McDonald's to Wonderbread. Shifting her focus, at 16 Margo entered the Cleveland Institute of Music studying cello and composition. She completed her education at the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with David Soyer, founding cellist of the Guarneri Quartet.
Ms. Drakos has collaborated with some of the world's leading artists including members of the Emerson, Guarneri, Orion, and Tokyo Quartets, the Beaux Arts Trio, Jonathan Biss, Yefim Bronfman, Andres Diaz, Roberto Diaz, Joseph Kalichstein, Ida Kavafian, Ralph Kirshbaum, Richard Stoltzman, and Pinchas Zuckerman. Together with Avery Fischer Award winner, violinist Soovin Kim, and the violist of the Guarneri Quartet, Michael Tree, Margo formed the string trio Divertimento. She has also toured the U.S. with Musicians from Marlboro. Margo received high acclaim in October 2004 after giving the world premiere of David Ludwig's Cello Concerto with the Vermont Symphony, Jaime Laredo conducting. “Margo Drakos played with the comfort and confidence that she might have given a major cello work she had played all her life. Her playing was warm and lyrical, virtuosic when necessary, delivering all the passion and tenderness the work asked for.”
Ms. Drakos has spent multiple summers as a participant at the Marlboro Music Festival and has performed as part of the Aspen, Kingston, Sarasota and Teton Music Festivals, and Music from Angel Fire. She also serves on the cello faculty at Encore School for Strings. Her instrument is a Vincenzo Postiglione, 1891. This year Ms. Drakos graduates from Columbia University with a Masters Degree in International Affairs/Human Rights. Ms. Drakos presented her co-authored paper: Extracting Corporate Responsibility: Towards a Human Rights Impact Assessment at the Yale Law School’s Young Scholars Conference in March 2006. This article is published in the Cornell International Law Journal, Volume 40, Spring 2007. Her co-authored article: Raising the Bottom Line is under revision for the Stanford Social Innovation Review.
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