- Cello
Colin Carr appears throughout the world as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist, and teacher. He has played with major orchestras worldwide, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, The Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, the orchestras of Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, Philadelphia, Montréal and all the major orchestras of Australia and New Zealand. Conductors with whom he has worked include Rattle, Gergiev, Dutoit, Elder, Skrowasczewski and Marriner. He has been a regular guest at the BBC Proms and has twice toured Australia. In the 2015-16 season he performs Fauré’s Quartet No. 2 in G Minor with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
With his duo partner Thomas Sauer he has played recitals throughout the United States and Europe. They have recently played recitals together at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Philadelphia’s Chamber Music Society and at the Wigmore Hall in London. Colin has played complete cycles of the Bach Solo Suites at the Wigmore Hall, in the United States at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Gardner Museum in Boston and recently in Montreal, Toronto, Ottowa and Vancouver.
Colin’s recordings for GM of the Bach Suites and the unaccompanied cello works of Kodaly, Britten, Crumb, and Schuller are highly acclaimed, as is his recent recording of the complete cello/piano works of Mendelssohn with Thomas Sauer on Cello Classics. The Brahms Sonatas on Arabesque, with pianist Lee Luvisi, is also a favorite. Last year there were two major releases: a new recording of the complete Bach Suites on the the Wigmore Live Label and the complete Beethoven cello/piano music (also with Tom Sauer) on the MSR label. Colin was the soloist in Elgar’s Cello Concerto in a BBC Music Magazine recording with the BBC Philharmonic. He has also recorded Tchaikovsky and Schoenberg sextets with the Emerson Quartet for Sony.
As a member of the Golub-Kaplan-Carr Trio, he recorded and toured extensively for 20 years. Chamber music plays an important role in his musical life. He is a frequent visitor to international chamber music festivals worldwide and has appeared often as a guest with the Guarneri and Emerson string quartets and with New York's Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Colin is the winner of many prestigious international awards, including First Prize in the Naumburg Competition, the Gregor Piatigorsky Memorial Award, Second Prize in the Rostropovich International Cello Competition and also winner of the Young Concert Artists competition.
He first played the cello at the age of five. Three years later he went to the Yehudi Menuhin School, where he studied with Maurice Gendron and later William Pleeth. He was made a professor at the Royal Academy of Music in 1998, having been on the faculty of the New England Conservatory in Boston for 16 years. In 1998, St. John’s College, Oxford created the post of “Musician in Residence” for him, and in September 2002 he became a professor at Stony Brook University in New York.
Colin’s cello was made by Matteo Gofriller in Venice in 1730. He makes his home with his wife Caroline and 3 children, Clifford, Frankie and Anya, in an old house outside Oxford.
He teaches at the Académie musicale de Villecroze in 2016.