Pau Casals i Defilló, known in English by his Spanish name Pablo Casals, was a Spanish and Puerto Rican cellist, composer, and conductor. He made many recordings throughout his career of solo, chamber, and orchestral music, including some as conductor, but he is perhaps best remembered for the recordings he made of the Cello Suites by Bach. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy.
Yo-Yo Ma is an American cellist. Born and partially raised in Paris to Chinese parents and educated in New York City, he was a child prodigy, performing from the age of four and a half. He graduated from the Juilliard School and Harvard University, attended Columbia University, and has performed as a soloist with orchestras around the world. He has recorded more than 90 albums and received 19 Grammy Awards.
Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich was a Russian cellist and conductor. In addition to his interpretations and technique, he was well known for both inspiring and commissioning new works, which enlarged the cello repertoire more than any cellist before or since. He inspired and premiered over 100 pieces, forming long-standing friendships and artistic partnerships with composers including Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Henri Dutilleux, Witold Lutosławski, Olivier Messiaen, Luciano Berio, Krzysztof Penderecki, Alfred Schnittke, Norbert Moret, Andreas Makris, Leonard Bernstein, Aram Khachaturian, and Benjamin Britten.
The six Cello Suites, BWV 1007–1012, are suites for unaccompanied cello by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). They are some of the most frequently performed solo compositions ever written for cello. Bach most likely composed them during the period 1717–1723, when he served as Kapellmeister in Köthen. The title given on the cover of the Anna Magdalena Bach manuscript was Suites à Violoncello Solo senza Basso.
Steven Isserlis is a British cellist. An acclaimed soloist, chamber musician, educator, writer and broadcaster, he is widely regarded as one of the leading musicians of his generation. He is also noted for his diverse repertoire and distinctive sound which is deployed with his use of gut strings.
Max Richter is a German-born British composer and pianist. He works within postminimalist and contemporary classical styles. Richter is classically trained, having graduated in composition from the University of Edinburgh, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and studied with Luciano Berio in Italy.
Lauri Porra is a Finnish bass guitarist and composer who has written scores for films and other media, as well as commissions from orchestras such as the Lahti Symphony and the Finnish Radio Symphony. He is also known for his work as the bass guitarist in the Finnish power metal band Stratovarius. Porra is a fourth generation musician, and the great-grandson of famous Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.
Matt Haimovitz is a cellist based in the United States and Canada. Born in Israel, he grew up in the US from the age of five. He plays mainly a cello made by Matteo Goffriller in 1710.
Nina Kotova is an American cellist of Eastern European decent. As well as being a versatile artist and an established composer she is a recording artist who performs both as a soloist with major orchestras and as a chamber musician.
Daniel Müller-Schott is a German cellist.
James Zuill Bailey, better known as Zuill Bailey is a celebrated, Grammy Award-winning American cello soloist, chamber musician, and artistic director. A graduate of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and the Juilliard School, he has appeared in recital and with major orchestras internationally. He is a professor of cello and Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at El Paso. Bailey’s extensive recording catalogue are released on TELARC, Avie, Steinway and Sons, Octave, Delos, Albany, Sono Luminus, Naxos, Azica, Concord, EuroArts, ASV, Oxingale and Zenph Studios.
Diran Alexanian was an Armenian cello teacher and one of the world's greatest virtuoso cellists.
Maurice Gendron was a French cellist, conductor and teacher. He is widely considered one of the greatest cellists of the 20th century. He was an Officer of the Legion of Honor and a recipient of the National Order of Merit. He was an active member of the French Resistance during World War II.
Maya Beiser is an American musician, cellist, performing artist and producer who lives in New York City. Beiser was raised on a kibbutz in Israel by her French mother and Argentine father, and graduated from Yale University School of Music. She has been described by the Boston Globe as "a force of nature", "a cello goddess" by The New Yorker and "the reigning queen of the avant-garde cello" by The Washington Post. Beiser is a 2015 United States Artists Distinguished Music Fellow and the Inaugural Mellon Distinguished Visiting Artist at the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology.
Tina Guo is a Chinese-born American cellist and erhuist from San Diego. Her international career as a cellist, electric cellist, erhuist, and composer is characterized by videos featuring theatrical backdrops and elaborate costumes, a range of genres, and an improvisatory style in film, television, and video game scores.
Alexander Ivashkin, was a Russian cellist, writer, academic and conductor. He was a professor of music and the Chair of Performance Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London since 1999, the director of the Centre for Russian Music, and the curator of the Alfred Schnittke Archive. In 1996, he published the first English-language biography of the composer Alfred Schnittke.
Music Room is an innovative British television music series that presents classical musicians and the pieces they play in a manner normally associated with popular music programming. Filmed in a bare studio with only a scaffold cube for a set, the programme strips away the glamour that often marks classical music as an elitist art form. The series has also been broadcast in Canada and across South America.
Gabriel Prokofiev is a Russian-British composer, producer, DJ, and founder of the Nonclassical record label and nightclub. He has been nominated for two Ivor Novello Awards and his works have been performed internationally by orchestras such as BBC Philharmonic, St Petersburg Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Detroit Symphony, MDR Leipzig, Buenos Aires Philharmonic and Royal Seville Symphony Orchestra.
Paul Wiancko is an American composer and cellist of the Kronos Quartet.
Peter Bruns is a German cellist and university professor.
