Jean-Guihen Queyras

Jean-Guihen Queyras enjoys an enviable reputation as a musician of exceptional versatility and integrity, equally as a soloist with orchestras, chamber musician and solo performer.
He has performed with many of the world’s great orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Philharmonia, Orchestre de Paris, NHK Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Tonhalle Zurich, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Budapest Festival Orchestra and Orchestre de la Suisse-Romande under conductors such as Iván Fischer, Philippe Herreweghe, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jiří Bělohlávek, Olivier Knussen and Sir Roger Norrington. He appears regularly with early music ensembles such as the Freiburger Barockorchester and Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.

Jean-Guihen Queyras is also an enthusiastic exponent of contemporary music and is committed to expanding the repertoire boundaries of his instrument. He regularly collaborates with composers such as Bruno Mantovani, Jörg Widmann and Pierre Boulez; he also premiered the concertos of Michael Jarrell and Johannes-Maria Staud. In November 2014, he performed Peter Eötvös’ cello concerto with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France for Eötvös’ 70th birthday celebrations and Dutilleux’s concerto for the composer’s 100th anniversary.
His regular chamber music partners include pianists Alexandre Tharaud and Alexander Melnikov and violinist Isabelle Faust. He is a member of the Arcanto Quartett and also performs with Zarb specialists Kevyan and Bijan Chemirani.
JG Queyras is frequently asked to host artistic residencies. These have included a “Carte Blanche” at the Aix-en-Provence Festival and projects in Utrecht’s Muziekcentrum Vredenburg, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and Gent’s De Bijloke. He was also “Artist in Residence” with the Hamburg-based chamber orchestra Ensemble Resonanz. He has made numerous recordings for harmonia mundi. Recent releases include Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations, recorded with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Jiří Bělohlávek, as well as Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano, recorded with Alexander Melnikov. He is currently involved in an all-Schumann project featuring the complete piano trios, performed with Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov, and the concertos, performed with the Freiburger Barockorchester and Pablo Heras-Casado. The final installment with the Piano Trio No. 1 and the Cello Concerto will be released in early 2016.

The 2015/16 season sees Jean-Guihen Queyras in Residence at the Wigmore Hall. Further highlights include appearances with the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln under François-Xavier Roth, Orquestra Nacionales de España under Vladimir Ashkenazy, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Sir Roger Norrington and Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra under Sylvain Cambreling. In the spring of 2016, he premieres Thomas Larcher’s “Cerha,” a commissioned work for solo cello and string orchestra.

Jean-Guihen Queyras 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.