Melora Creager

Melora Creager (born March 25, 1966) is an American cellist, singer-songwriter, performing artist and founder of the cello rock group Rasputina.

She grew up in Emporia, Kansas. She and both her siblings were adopted. Her adoptive mother and father were a graphic designer and a nuclear physicist, respectively. Both parents were supportive of the arts; encouraging their children to take up musical instruments, and playing together in a family orchestra. Creager began piano at age five, and the cello at age nine. Attempting to fit-in in a rural Kansas setting, she gave up the cello in the eighth grade and focused on visual art.

Creager moved to New York City in 1984 to attend Parsons School of Design, where she was a photography major specializing in infra-red self-portraiture. In 1988, Creager began playing the cello with drag artists in the East Village and co-formed "The Fingerlakes Trio", whose members posed as classical musicians performing disco hits on cello, flute, clarinet and operatic voice. They appeared in the film Longtime Companion performing the Village People hit, YMCA. She joined 4AD group Ultra Vivid Scene in 1989, playing cello and singing on their Mercy Seat single.

In 1991, Creager founded alternative cello ensemble Rasputina by writing a manifesto and placing a want-ad in the Village Voice stating "electric cellists wanted". Cellist/composer Julia Kent was the first respondent. Rasputina performed regularly at NYC venues such as CBGB's Gallery, Brownie's and Fez before being signed to Columbia Records in 1996, for whom they subsequently made two albums. With varying members, Creager has made five more albums as Rasputina, and multiple shorter releases.

Creager also played cello for Nirvana on the European leg of the In Utero world tour (including the band's final show in Munich).

Creager designed all the Rasputina album covers excepting one- Lost & Found, which was designed by artist Ryan Obermeyer and included in the 44th Annual Society of Illustrators Exhibition in New York, 2002. From 1988- 1996, Creager was employed as a jewelry designer for Erickson Beamon, creating costume jewelry for Anna Sui, Donna Karan, Barney's New York, and Vogue magazine. She continues her relationship with Anna Sui, occasionally designing fashion show invitations and t-shirts.

Through more than seven albums and frequent touring, Creager through Rasputina has been an originator of and influence on such movements as Freak folk and Steampunk.

Creager makes unique use of historical events and figures in her lyrics and themes. Inspirations include the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, Howard Hughes, Rose Kennedy, victims of Josef Mengele, Emily Dickinson, Pitcairn Island, Columbia County, NY. Combining history and humor in song-form and spoken-word pieces, Creager is also unique in exploring women's history through pop music.

In 2003, Creager starred in and scored the 13-minute film On My Knees, based on the diaries of Victorian "maid-of-all-work", Hannah Cullwick, winning a Best Actress award from the "Chicks With Flicks" festival.

Creager resides in the Hudson Valley, New York with her partner and two daughters; Hollis, who wrote and sang the lyrics of the song "Nov. 17dee" on the album Frustration Plantation, and Ivy, born November 20, 2009.

She has provided cello for Repo! The Genetic Opera, The Devil's Carnival, (both films by Terrance Zdunich), and Voltaire's album Riding a Black Unicorn Down the Side of an Erupting Volcano While Drinking from a Chalice Filled with the Laughter of Small Children!.