Camille Thomas

Cellist Camille Thomas broke through to international recognition with major prizes in the early and middle 2010s, winning a coveted place on the roster of the Deutsche Grammophon label. She released her debut album on that label in 2017.
Thomas was born in Paris in 1988 and began cello studies at age four. She made rapid progress and was enrolled at the National Conservatory in Paris by ten. At 16, she received a first prize award from the school’s jury. After that, her training was both French and German. Thomas took classes at the Conservatory of Music and Dance in Aulnay-sous-Bois, France, and then moved to Germany to continue her studies at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin and then the Hochschüle für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar. She has taken master classes with, among others, Steven Isserlis, who has invited her to perform at festivals with which he is connected. Thomas made an unusually large number of appearances with mid-level European orchestras, including Sinfonia Varsovia, the Baden-Baden Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Lille National Orchestra, among many others. She is also a frequent performer of chamber music, partnering with such players as Beatrice Berrut, Julien Libeer, and Frank Braley. In 2019, she began playing the De Munck-Feuermann cello, a Stradivarius instrument from 1730. Her 2020 performance schedule was set to resume with an August appearance in Tokyo, in the Dvořák Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, with the Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra at Suntory Hall.
In 2013, Thomas released an album devoted to Russian works with pianist Berrut, on the Fuga Libera label. The following year, she won two major prizes: Newcomer of the Year at the French ceremony Les Victoires de la Musique (roughly analogous to the U.S. Grammy Awards), and First Prize at the European Broadcasting Union Competition. She appeared with tenor Rolando Villazón on the television program The Stars of Tomorrow in 2015, and her second album, Reminiscences, snared an Echo Klassik prize in Germany. These accomplishments put the young cellist on Deutsche Grammophon’s radar, and she released her debut album on the label, a collection of works by Saint-Saëns and Offenbach, in 2017. She returned in 2020 with the thematic crossover release Voice of Hope. ~ James Manheim