Vashti Hunter

She has performed in prestigious halls throughout Europe, including the Wigmore Hall in London, the Liszt Academy Grand Hall in Budapest, Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Salle Moliere in Lyon and the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. As a soloist, she has appeared with orchestras such as the Kodaly Philharmonic Debrecen, the Southbank Sinfonia and the Pilsen Philharmonic, under the batons of great conductors like Gábor Takács-Nagy, Alexander Lonquich and Antonello Manacorda. Among the
festivals to which she has been invited are Festival Academy Budapest, the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival, Festival Musikdorf Ernen, the Davos Festival, Heidelberger Frühling and the Shanghai Chamber Music Festival. In 2010, Vashti Hunter co-founded Trio Gaspard together with violinist Jonian Ilias Kadesha and pianist Nicholas Rimmer. The ensemble, which records exclusively for the Chandos label, has won first prizes in the Haydn and Joachim international competitions and performs regularly in some of the most important concert halls. In 2020, she joined the Hungarian-based Kelemen Quartet. They had the great fortune to spend the pandemic lockdown learning and recording all six of Bartok’s string quartets in Budapest under the auspices of Hungarian musical legends György Kurtag and Ferenc Rados. The quartet has since performed at the Budapest Music Centre, the Liszt Academy Grand Hall, Esterhazy Palace Eisenstadt, the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival and the Mantua Chamber Music Festival. Vashti Hunter studied in London and Hannover with Leonid Gorokhov and later in Berlin with Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt. She has recently been appointed as a cello professor at the Anton Bruckner Private University Linz and she holds a teaching position at the University in Hannover, as well as being a guest chamber music professor at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole in Italy. She plays on a Testore cello built in 1742, on generous loan by a private sponsor.