Camille Thomas

Cellist Camille Thomas first gained worldwide attention through a series of major competition victories during the first half of the 2010s that earned her a contract with Deutsche Grammophon, the label on which her debut recording appeared in 2017.

Born in Paris in 1988, she began cello lessons at the age of four and advanced quickly enough to enter the National Conservatory (now the CRR) by age ten. At sixteen she received the institution’s first-prize award. Her subsequent training bridged France and Germany: she attended the Conservatory of Music and Dance in Aulnay-sous-Bois before continuing at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin and the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar. Master classes with Steven Isserlis led to festival invitations from the British cellist, and Thomas accumulated an unusually extensive list of engagements with ensembles such as Sinfonia Varsovia, the Baden-Baden Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Lille National Orchestra.

Her first commercial recording, a program of Russian repertoire made with pianist Beatrice Berrut, was issued by Fuga Libera in 2013. The following year she captured two significant honors: Newcomer of the Year at Les Victoires de la Musique and First Prize in the European Broadcasting Union Competition. Thomas also maintains an active chamber-music schedule, collaborating regularly with pianists Julien Libeer and Frank Braley. In 2019 she became the player of the 1730 De Munck-Feuermann Stradivarius cello. Her 2020 calendar featured an August performance of the Dvořák Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, with the Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra at Suntory Hall in Tokyo.

An appearance with tenor Rolando Villazón on the program The Stars of Tomorrow in 2015, together with the Echo Klassik prize awarded to her second album, Reminiscences, drew the attention of Deutsche Grammophon. The label released her debut disc, devoted to works by Saint-Saëns and Offenbach, in 2017. She followed it in 2020 with the thematic crossover album Voice of Hope and in 2023 contributed to all four volumes of The Chopin Project, performing cello transcriptions of Chopin’s music.