Carole Cerasi

Known for her expressive and virtuosic intepretations in a wide-ranging repertoire ranging from Byrd to early Beethoven, her many performances have received great critical acclaim and her recordings have garnered an impressive series of awards.

Carole has given recitals in major festivals including La Roque d’Anthéron, Sablé, Ambronay, Istanbul, Lufthansa, York, Göttingen, Brno, Tallinn, Lausanne and Ludwigsburg. She has given recitals throughout Europe as well as in the United States, Canada, Israel, Colombia, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. She has premiered works for harpsichord by Matteo Fargion and Kevin Volans, and has worked closely with dance groups Siobhan Davies, Rambert, and Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Companies.

Her debut CD, a disc of music by Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, won the 1999 Gramophone Baroque Instrumental Award, and her recordings of CPE Bach and Thomas Tomkins both received the Diapason d’Or de l’Année. Her next CD, JS Bach and the Möller Manuscript, won a further Diapason d’Or de l’Année and was runner-up in the Gramophone Baroque Instrumental Awards. Further acclaimed recordings include works by Manuel Blasco de Nebra, Bach and Scarlatti (runner-up in the 2012 Gramophone Awards). In 2018 Metronome Recordings released her 10 CD set of François Couperin’s complete harpsichord works, which received a Diapason d’Or.

Besides her work at the Royal Academy of Music, she is as professor of Harpsichord and Fortepiano the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Yehudi Menuhin School, and is a sought-after pedagogue by talented students of the younger generation. She is also in demand as a member of international jury panels.

Carole, whose mother tongue is French, comes from a Sephardic family based in Istanbul, and spent her childhood in Stockholm, Geneva and Jerusalem.