Jonathan Aasgaard

Born in Oslo in 1974, Jonathan Aasgaard studied the cello at the Barratt Dues School of Music with Bjørn Solum in Oslo and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. A pupil of Professor Leonard Stehn, Jonathan won all the cello and chamber music prizes and was a Gold Medal finalist. He received his Recital Award in 1998 together with a silver medal from the Worshipful Company of Musicians.

Since receiving the Debutant Prize in 1996, Jonathan has enjoyed a busy concert career participating in festivals as diverse as Bergen, Washington, Halifax, Prague, the Manchester Cello Festival and the BBC Lutoslawski Festival, and performing with many of Norway’s leading orchestras.

In 1999 he was appointed principal cello of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and made his concerto debut with the orchestra and Junichi Hirokami playing Haydn’s D major concerto. Since then he has performed over twenty works for cello and orchestra with the RLPO and has been a guest principal with several leading British and European orchestras.

Chamber music performances have taken him around Europe and to Japan, South Korea and the USA; he has recorded for BBC Radio 3, Classic FM, Norwegian radio and on TV in Japan, Turkey and the Middle East. As a member of the string trio Philion he has recorded works by Beethoven, Dohnányi and Martinu. A recording of Brahms’ cello sonatas with Martin Roscoe is forthcoming.

Jonathan is interested in a wide range of repertoire from Bach to Elliott Carter and has given several world premiers, working particularly with Robert Saxton and Simon Bainbridge as well as the Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim. His repertoire includes many contemporary concertos from Henze and Lutoslawski to Tan Dun and Jon Lord.

With his wife Georgina, also a cellist, he formed in 1998 the cello duo Celli Unlimited. They work as much as possible in the community, especially for disabled children, under the auspices of Lord Menuhin’s Live Music Now, playing repertoire ranging from Bach to the blues and samba as well as new commissions and arrangements. They have found these commitments increasingly hard to honour after the birth of their three children Thelonious, Ismael and Olga.

Jonathan plays a cello made by Celeste Farotti in Milan 1926