Biography

Jean-Guihen Queyras

Current as of July 2023

The work of cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras is characterized by curiosity, diversity and a firm focus on the music itself, whether on the concert platform or on record. He learned his interpretative approach from Pierre Boulez, with whom he established a long artistic partnership.
He is as thorough in his approach to early music, including continuing collaborations with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, as he is to contemporary music. He has given the world premieres of works by composers such as Ivan Fedele, Gilbert Amy, Bruno Mantovani, Michael Jarrell, Johannes Maria Staud, Thomas Larcher, Tristan Murail and Peter Eötvös.
Jean-Guihen Queyras has been artist in residence at many concert halls and festivals, including the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and the Wigmore Hall, and for Radio France.
He was a founding member of the Arcanto Quartet and forms a celebrated trio with Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov. He also works frequently with the pianist Alexandre Tharaud. He is a regular guest with such renowned orchestras as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and the London Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra. He has worked with conductors such as Iván Fischer, Philippe Herreweghe, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, François-Xavier Roth, John Eliot Gardiner and Roger Norrington.
Plans for the 2023/24 season include concert tours to Australia, the USA and Canada, and engagements with European orchestras including the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Orquesta Nacional de España and the Residentie Orkest in The Hague. He will also give concerts at the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Wigmore Hall in London, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Heidelberg Spring Music Festival, the Vienna Konzerthaus and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.
Jean-Guihen Queyras’s discography comprises many acclaimed recordings, including the cello concertos by Edward Elgar, Antonín Dvořák, Philippe Schœller and Gilbert Amy. His recent recordings include Chopin‘s and Rachmaninoff’s cello sonatas with Alexander Melnikov, Invisible Stream with Raphaël Imbert, Pierre-François Blanchard and Sonny Troupé and, in 2023,  works by Marin Marais in transcriptions for cello and piano, with Alexandre Tharaud. Jean-Guihen Queyras records exclusively for harmonia mundi.
Jean-Guihen Queyras holds a professorship at the University of Music in Freiburg and is artistic director of the Rencontres Musicales de Haute-Provence Festival.
He plays a 1696 instrument by Gioffredo Cappa, made available to him by the Mécénat Musical Société Générale.

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Jean-Guihen Queyras Cellist
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Jean-Guihen Queyras Cellist
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