One of Europe’s most versatile cellists, the Norwegian Jonathan Aasgaard is active as soloist, chamber musician, studio musician, orchestral principal, teacher, and explorer of new music. He is Principal Cello of both the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Sinfonia of London, a regular guest principal of leading British and continental European orchestras, and, as a dedicated teacher, Professor of Cello at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Chamber music performances have taken him across Europe, the Middle East, Japan, South Korea, and the USA: he has collaborated with artists such as the violinists Nigel Kennedy, Henning Kraggerud, and Julian Rachlin, violist Lawrence Power, cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Giovanni Sollima, pianists Simon Trpceski, Boris Giltburg, and Joanna MacGregor, and clarinettist Martin Fröst in a range of prominent festivals and concert halls. He has performed more than fifty works for cello and orchestra, his discography including recordings of Bloch’s Schelomo, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, works for cello and orchestra by Carl Davis, with the Philharmonia Orchestra, and, among a number of recitals, Brahms’s cello sonatas, with Martin Roscoe, an ‘Editor’s Choice’ for chamber music in the  magazine Gramophone. In 2025 he will release a new recording of Walton’s Cello Concerto, with Sinfonia of London conducted by John Wilson. A champion of new music, he has given the world première of Carl Davis’s Ballade for cello and orchestra, the European première of Giovanni Sollima’s Double Cello Concerto, the UK première of Weinberg’s Cello Concerto, the US première of concertos by Franz Neruda and Emil Hartmann, and world premières of dozens of solo pieces, many written specially for him. Jonathan Aasgaard plays a cello made by Celeste Farotti, in Milan, in 1926. www.jonathan-aasgaard.com