A Swedish soloist, chamber musician, composer, educator and publisher. Born in Stockholm, he now resides in London. He is a professor and lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music in London and, alongside Peter Adams, a soloist with Oxford Philomusica. He performs worldwide, and his playing is distinguished by the extraordinary depth of sound and exceptional virtuosity. He plays the “Grützmacher” cello by Joseph Antonius Rocca from 1857.

He studied under Maja Vogl at the Conservatory in Gothenburg and in Leonard Rose’s class at the Juilliard School of Performing Arts. He was a student of Pierre Fournier, Janos Starker, Lynn Harrell, and Suzanne Bloch (Renaissance music). He was a lecturer at the University of Gothenburg and conducted masterclasses at music universities in San Francisco, Cleveland, and Oberlin, as well as in Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Portugal, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Sweden.

He is the founder of the “Expansions” project – an annual summer course for cellists focusing on the technical foundations necessary for expressing musical ideas.

As a soloist, he has performed and recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche S.O. Berlin, Czech Philharmonic and Dallas Symphony, working with conductors such as André Previn, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Andrew Litton, Maxim Shostakovich and Leif Segerstam.

As a chamber musician, he has performed in such venues as Alice Tully Hall (New York), Théâtre du Châtelet and Cité de la Musique (Paris), Musikverein (Vienna), Gulbenkian (Lisbon), Berwald Hall (Stockholm), University Hall (Nobel Peace Prize Hall, Oslo), as well as at the Barbican, Wigmore, Queen Elizabeth Hall, and Royal Festival Hall in London.

He has played as first cellist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Swedish Opera and Norrköping SO (Sweden) and as guest cellist with the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, Britten Sinfonia and St. Martins-in-the-Fields of London, the BBC and Royal Scottish National Orchestras, the Royal Concertgebouw, the Los Angeles and Oslo Philharmonics, Bergen, the Bournemouth and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras and Sweden’s leading symphony orchestras.

His keen interest in the cello repertoire has resulted in several highly acclaimed and award-winning albums (including ‘Record of the Month’ and Record of the Week by BBC Music Magazine and The Guardian; Diapason d’Or for an album of music by Karl Koechlin). Soloist and chamber musician in numerous recordings for labels such as EMI, Deutsche Grammophone, Decca, BIS, Hyperion, Musica Sveciae, Opus 3, Caprice Records. Together with Vladimir Ashkenazi, they have made recordings of Rachmaninov compositions and Shostakovich’s piano trios.

Author of ‘The Orchestral’ (published by Boosey & Hawkes), owner of the CelloLid.com. label, which promotes the artist’s own compositions and transcriptions of works for cello – including  the series ‘If Bach was a cellist’. Author of the collection ‘The Essential Warm-up Routine for Cellists’ and ‘The Beauty of Scales’ (produced thanks to a research grant from the Royal Academy of Music).

Photo by arch. Oxford Philharmonic