Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Cissell began playing music at a young age—he was a bluegrass fiddling champion at the age of eight and performed Mozart’s third violin concerto on his first honors recital soon thereafter. A finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and semifinalist for the American Prize, Cissell earned a degree in history from Princeton University before establishing himself as a professional musician and composer in New York City.

He cut his teeth as a session musician recording for a wide variety of artists from Ingrid Michaelson to Philip Glass, and performing at many of the city’s most well-known venues including Radio City Music Hall, The Bitter End, The Knitting Factory, CBGB, The Living Room, Zebulon, Rockwood Music Hall, and John Zorn’s The Stone. Cissell is a 2013-14 Teaching Artist for the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers program. He is currently at work on a chamber opera and on a third studio album, Backwoods.