A3. Firstly, As a cellist you should be first familiar with the bass clef of course. Later as you progress, you will learn tenor clef and treble clef. During my quartet ensemble years at the university, I played some of the craziest clefs that I had never seen or heard of before.

All my jazz sheet music is written in jazz chart form (treble clef). It is how I wished the jazz "Real Book" were written. (ie. easy to read, simple melody with lyrics with easy to read chords to accompaniment and basic guide for solo choice.) These jazz charts were also inspired by the "Fake Books."

In Jazz, we read charts and thus my charts (jazz sheet music) are written in treble clef. It is your job to transform the music into your interpretation. This goes for adding notes and changing rhythms, as well as playing the chords the way that you hear them.

So...Be versatile and learn the universal, melodic treble clef and play the music as written...
OR!
Develop the skill to transpose the music to any octave on the cello fingerboard that fancies your interpretation.
I highly discourage playing the music as written. I myself don't even play the sheet music exactly as I wrote it. It is not the way (jazz discipline). If the note is "C", you have the complete freedom to play any "C" on the fingerboard. This gives you the complete freedom to play the music in the low bass voice, mid tenor voice, or screaming high soprano octaves toward the bridge.
I will not be bound to only reading and playing in the bass clef! The cello is a 4 octave instrument. Be free!