Elizabeth Macdonald is Director of Strings at Washington University in St. Louis, conductor of the Washington University Chamber Orchestra, director of chamber ensembles and instructor of cello and viola da gamba. As a cellist, she has held positions with the Chicago Lyric Opera, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music in Glasgow, and performed with the St. Louis Symphony, the BBC Scottish Symphony, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Scottish Opera and the Polish Chamber Orchestra. She recently released a CD of her own multiple-cello arrangements, Cellorific. She has performed solo and chamber music concerts all over the world for audiences that range from the Queen of England to Indian tribes of the southwestern United States.

Elizabeth Macdonald gives solo recitals in the mid-west and performs regularly with Ensemble Voltaire, which brought out a new CD of chamber works by Telemann for Catalpa Classics in 2004. In January, 2005 she gave a duo-gamba recital with Mary Anne Ballard, inaugurating the new concert hall at Notre Dame University. She is among the faculty for the Viola da Gamba Society of America Conclave in 2005.