CELLIST       CURATOR       COLLABORATOR    

Passionate about playing and curating chamber music,

Clare O'Connell is a versatile cellist and creator with a unique sound. She is a member of the Le Page Trio, Lontano, The Storytellers Ensemble, The Harborough Collective, Loki & Propellor Ensemble and is a regular collaborator with many other chamber music & chamber opera projects. 

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She founded and curates Behind The Mirror: her own series of intimate chamber music concerts in Berkhamsted, commissioning new music from composers Alex Mills, Leonardo Margutti, Luke Bedford, David Bruce, Freya Waley Cohen and Rubens Askenar, experimenting with varying instrumental line-ups, making her own arrangements of a vast array of music  for unusual groups of instruments, and interweaving music poetry and storytelling to add another dimension to the concert experience. Her arrangements have been performed in Westminster Abbey, the Wigmore Hall  and on BBC radio 3.

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Recent highlights include a  performance in the Wigmore Hall of her own arrangement of The Lark Ascending with Daniel Pioro, a solo performance in ‘An Elephant in the Garden’ at Shakespeare’s Globe’s storytelling Festival & playing the solo cello part in Sam Bordoli’s miniature music theatre piece for tenor and cello ‘Belongings’ as part of the Invisible Opera House inquiry programme. 

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Currently she is working on her debut solo album "What Can I Do", a response to the Corona Virus pandemic: a mix of ancient & modern music for solo and layered cello exploring themes relating to the crisis, which she gathered  & arranged to perform to her street during the lockdown period; She is cellist and mentor for a new chamber opera, "Persephone's Dream" for soprano & solo cello with Fat Lady Opera, currently in development; and she is developing ideas for her second solo album HIRAETH, inspired by themes of nostalgia, longing & homesickness.

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She is a graduate of Wadham College, Oxford where she studied Ancient & Modern History followed by postgraduate study at the Royal College of Music & the Hochshule für Künste in Bremen, Germany with internationally acclaimed cellist and teacher Alexander Baillie. She plays on a cello by Stefan Krattenmacher.

HI-RES PHOTOS

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