Weilerstein has received a number of honors. In 2000–01, she won an Avery Fisher Career Grant and was selected to play in the ECHO "Rising Stars" program and Chamber Music Society II, the young artists' program of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2004 she graduated from Columbia University in New York City with a BA in Russian history.[6] In 2006 she was awarded the Leonard Bernstein Prize at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. In 2011 she received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant".[7]
A champion of contemporary music, Weilerstein has worked extensively with composers Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach and Joseph Hallman.[8] She performed the New York premiere of Golijov's Cello Concerto "Azul" at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, the world premiere of Auerbach's 24 Preludes for Cello and Piano at the Caramoor International Music Festival, Auerbach's transcription of Shostakovich Op. 34 for Cello and Piano at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, and Hallman's Cello Concerto with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.[9]
In March 2017, at Symphony Hall, she performed the world premiere of Matthias Pintscher's concerto for cello and orchestra "un despertar" with the Boston Symphony Orchestra to critical acclaim.[12] She plays a 1730 Domenico Montagnana cello.
Since 2013, she has been married to Venezuelan conductor Rafael Payare. They have two daughters.[13]
In 2023, she began a six-chapter series of concerts called "FRAGMENTS," multisensory solo cello productions combining 27 new commissions with Bach’s solo cello suites.[14]
Old Souls – Chamber Music for Flute and Strings with Gili Schwarzman, Guy Braunstein, Amihai Grosz, Susanna Yoko Henkel (Antonín Dvořák, Ludwig van Beethoven, Hugo Wolf, Fritz Kreisler) PENTATONE PTC 5186815 (2019)
Alisa Weilerstein & Vivian Hornik Weilerstein: Works for Cello and Piano (recording in the EMI Classics "Debut" Series) (EMI 5 73498 2)
The Weilerstein Trio, with Donald Weilerstein (violin), Alisa Weilerstein (cello) and Vivian Hornik Weilerstein (piano): Dvořák Trios (recording from Koch International Classics) (Koch B000CC4W14)
Joseph Hallman: Cello Concerto (St. Petersburg) (live recording of premiere performance): Alisa Weilerstein (cello) and the St. Petersburg (Russia) Chamber Philharmonic, Jeffery Meyer, conductor and Artistic Director (jhallmanmusic 884502022742).
Weilerstein and Sujari Britt perform Luigi Boccherini's Sonata for Two Cellos in C major – 1. Allegro moderato at the White House Evening of Classical Music (November 2009)
