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, has twice toured Australia, and has
recently played concertos in South Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia and New Zealand.
Mr. Carr's most memorable performances include the Dvorák Concerto to close the
Prague Autumn Festival, and Beethoven's Triple Concerto, with Sir Colin
Davis conducting, at Royal Festival Hall in London.
In recent seasons Carr has performed
cycles of Beethoven's complete works for cello and piano with his duo partner
Thomas Sauer throughout the United States and in England and France. Other
recent highlights include performances of Don Quixote in Germany, Shostakovich's
Concerto No. 1 in Korea, the original version of the Rococo Variations
in Holland, and Shostakovich's Concerto No. 2 in the U.S. He also played
several cycles of the Bach Suites in London, and in the United States at
the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York and the Gardner Museum
in Boston. During the 2009-10 season Carr performed the complete works for
cello and piano of Brahms, Schumann and Mendelssohn in two concerts. He
recorded the complete Mendelssohn works for Cello Classics in 2010. Highlights
of the 2010-11 season include Elgar's concerto with the Halle Orchestra and
Mark Elder, Lutoslawski's concerto with the Toronto Symphony, Schumann's
concerto with the Holland Symphonia and recitals at the Concertgebouw in
Amsterdam and at Philadelphia's Chamber Music Society.
As a member of the Golub-Kaplan-Carr
Trio, he recorded and toured extensively for 20 years. 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. Recitals take Mr. Carr to major cities each
season, with regular performances in London, New York and Boston.
Carr's GM recordings of the
unaccompanied cello works of Kodaly, Britten, Crumb, and Schuller, as well as
his Bach Suites, are highly acclaimed. The Brahms Sonatas on
Arabesque, with pianist Lee Luvisi, is also a favorite. Mr. Carr was the
soloist in Elgar's Cello Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic for a BBC
Music Magazine recording.
Colin Carr is the winner of many
prestigious international awards, including First Prize in the Naumburg
Competition, the Gregor Piatigorsky Memorial Award and Second Prize in the
Rostropovich International Cello Competition.
Mr. Carr 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.
Mr. Carr's cello was made by Matteo
Gofriller in Venice in 1730. He makes his home with his wife Caroline and 3
young children, Clifford, Frankie and Anya, in an old house outside Oxford.
