Jean-Guihen Queyras, cello

Jean-Guihen Queyras enjoys an enviable reputation as a musician of exceptional versatility and integrity. His musical horizons are seemingly boundless and he is in great demand both as a soloist with international orchestras and conductors, a chamber musician and as a solo performer.

He has performed with many of the world’s great orchestras including the Philharmonia, Orchestre de Paris, NHK Symphony, Tokyo Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Tonhalle Zurich, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse-Romande and Netherlands Philharmonic under the baton of conductors such as Franz Brüggen, Günther Herbig, Ivan Fischer, Philippe Herreweghe, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jiri Belohlavek, Olivier Knussen and Sir Roger Norrington. He is a regular soloist with several early music ensembles such as Freiburg Baroque and Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and he made his Carnegie Hall debut in New York with Concerto Köln in March 2004.

Jean-Guihen is frequently asked to host artistic residencies. These have included projects in the Muziekcentrum Vredenburg in Utrecht, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and De Bijloke in Gent. He was “Artist in Residence” with the Hamburg-based chamber orchestra, Ensemble Resonanz, with whom he led and played several eclectic programmes in the Laieszhalle Hamburg, Köln Philharmonie, Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord Paris, the Konzerthaus Wien and the Muziekgebouw Amsterdam.

Highlights of the this season include performances with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Jean-Guihen will be taking part in a major Schumann project with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and Pablo Heras-Casado, throughout Europe. He will also be “Artist in Residence” with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra during the 13/14 season. Equally hailed for his landmark solo Bach recitals, Jean-Guihen will perform throughout Europe, the US and Japan in the 13/14 season.

Jean-Guihen is an enthusiastic exponent of contemporary music and is committed to expanding the repertoire boundaries of his instrument. He had a longstanding relationship with the Ensemble Intercontemporain de Paris and regularly collaborates with composers such as Bruno Mantovani, Jörg Widmann and Pierre Boulez. He has premiered Michael Jarrel’s concerto as well as Johannes-Maria Staud’s concerto, which he premiered in the Konzerthaus Berlin and the Musikverein Wien in 2010 and has subsequently performed at the Salzburg Festival.

He made his BBC Proms debut to unanimous acclaim in 2008 and appears often at the Aldeburgh and Edinburgh Festivals and at the Wigmore Hall. His regular chamber music partners include the pianists Alexandre Tharaud and Alexander Melnikov and the violinist Isabelle Faust. He is a member of the Arcanto Quartet with Tabea Zimmermann, Antje Weithaas and Daniel Sepec, and also performs with Zarb specialists Kevan and Bijan Chemirani.

Jean-Guihen has made several successful recordings for harmonia mundi and, following the success of his much anticipated recording of Bach’s complete solo Suites in 2008 for which he received immediate acclaim (Diapason d’Or and CD of the Year in Diapason, CHOC du Monde de la Musique etc) and his nominations as Soloist of the Year at the Victoires de la Musique and Artist of the Year of Diapason’s readers in 2009, he has released three further recordings; a Debussy-Poulenc CD with pianist Alexandre Tharaud, Cello Concertos of the 21st Century and, most recently, Vivaldi Cello Concerti with Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. Previous CDs include Schubert’s ‘Arpeggione’ alongside works by Berg and Webern, Dvorak’s Cello Concerto with the Prague Philharmonia under the baton of Jiri Belohlavek) and Haydn and Monn’s Cello Concertos performed on a period instrument with the Freiburger Barockorchester, praised in both the Independent on Sunday and the Saturday Telegraph as the definitive baroque version.

Jean-Guihen plays a cello made by Gioffredo Cappa in 1696, on loan from Mécénat Musical Société Générale since November 2005. He is a professor at the Musikhochschule Freiburg.