Gerard Le Feuvre - Cellist and director KINGS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
"Consummate skill……. Enthralling……."
"a cellist of the highest class" - international press.
Gerard Le Feuvre was born in the island of Jersey in the Channel Islands
in 1962. Like many of his generation, his musical inspiration as a child
came from Jaqueline Du Pre (also descended from a Jersey family), with whom
he is distantly related, and by his mid teens Gerard had won two national
awards and was described as one of the most outstanding young British cellists of his generation.
He went on to win scholarships to the Royal Academy of Music, the Banff
School of Performing Arts (Canada), and the Sibelius Academy (Finland),
studying with some of the greatest teachers and cellists in the world; Florence
Hooton, Aldo Parisot, Vladimir Orloff, T. Tsutsumi, Arto Noras and in master
class with Paul Tortelier. He was awarded the Lloyd's Bank national award
for "outstanding musicianship and musical attainment", as principal
cello in the National Youth Orchestra, and also won a large award for study
abroad, given by the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. In 1980 while still
a student, he gained first prize (CBS Records award) in the Royal Society
of Arts national competition, and performed in the Luzern Festival in Switzerland,
after which he was described as "a cellist of the highest class" in the international press.
Over the last 20 years Gerard has given over 500 recitals mostly with the
distinguished British pianist Nigel Clayton, and has performed concertos
in the UK, Germany, Scandinavia, and in the USA. He has had several works
written for him by distinguished British composers and is an active composer
himself, writing many works for celli, and for his Bassoonist wife Sarah.
He was for 7 years the cellist of the internationally renowned "English
String Quartet" (led by Diana Cummings), and continues to work with
Diana as principal cellist of the Milton Keynes City Orchestra - the distinguished
resident orchestra in Milton Keynes' hugely successful new theatre. Gerard
has free-lanced, playing principal cello with the English Chamber Orchestra,
the English Sinfonia, the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, the New Queen's Hall Orchestra,
and many other distinguished chamber orchestras as well as continuing to
appear in the UK and abroad as soloist.
In recent years Gerard has regularly performed in the USA. He received a standing ovation at the Masterworks Arts Festival in up-state New York for a performance of Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations for cello and orchestra and a repeat performance in Princeton New Jersey was also highly acclaimed in the press. Gerard is also Director of the Kings Chamber Orchestra, an orchestra renowned as much for its humour and its pioneering improvisations as for its conventional repertoire. In the year 2000, the Royal Academy of Music awarded Gerard the title of "Associate" in honour of his "outstanding achievements in the music profession".
" I am convinced of his outstanding musical, artistic, instrumental,
and human qualities"
Arto Noras - International solo cellist
" Outstandingly talented, as well as a performer, he is a gifted and
active composer. He has the very special gift of being able to penetrate
to the heart of all that he plays, and thereby rivets the attention of his
audience"
Sir David Lumsden - Principal , Royal Academy of Music
"His adaptable and original personality enabled us to offer him engagements
as a soloist/presenter in situations in which we could have placed none
other of the musicians on our comprehensive list. Not only is Gerard an
unusually talented musician, but his special qualities of spirituality,
and practicality have combined to make him an ideal example of the musician
serving his community as envisaged by Sir Yehudi Menuhin in his "Live
Music Now" scheme."
Sheila Gold - Live Music Now International
For repertoire and samples see Concerts.
