Raphael Bell
cello

Cellist Raphael Bell is co-founder and co-Artistic Director of the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival and has performed as a chamber musician at distinguished venues such as Wigmore Hall, Suntory Hall (Tokyo), Alti Hall (Kyoto), the Berlin Philharmonie, Schloss Elmau, Alice Tully Hall, and Carnegie Hall, and at festivals including Wiener Festwochen, Ferrara Musica, Ravinia Festival, Verbier Festival, Aix-en-Provence, Bel-Air, and IMS Prussia Cove. He was part of the Prussia Cove tour, with Pekka Kuusisto, Matthew Hunt, and Alasdair Beatson, that won the 2007 Chamber Music Award from the Royal Philharmonic Society in London. As a soloist, he has performed with the Curtis Institute Symphony Orchestra, the Alexandria, Hendersonville, and Las Cruces Symphonies. Mr. Bell has toured Europe, Asia, and South America as a member of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, and made numerous recordings with these ensembles for Deutsche Grammophon, Virgin Classics and ARTE under conductors Claudio Abbado and Daniel Harding. He also plays frequently in the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, including on their recent Sony Classical recording of Porgy and Bess with Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Mr. Bell enjoys working with period instrument groups, such as Musica Saecolorum and John Eliot Gardiner's ensembles, the English Baroque Soloists and Orchestra Revolutionaire et Romantique. In addition, he has played with the Endymion Ensemble, Dante Quartet, and as guest principal cello with the BBC Concert Orchestra, European Camerata, Nagaokakyo Ensemble, and Kristiandsand Symphony Orchestra. This coming season Mr. Bell will begin as principal cello of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic in Belgium. In France, he is an Artist-in-Residence at La Loingtaine, near Fontainebleau, performing there throughout the year and giving masterclasses, and is a member of the La Loingtaine Trio. He has two degrees from of The Juilliard School, where he studied with Harvey Shapiro. Other important teachers include Steven Isserlis, Mario Brunello, Bernard Greenhouse and Ferenc Rados.