Catherine Rimer

MMus, GRNCM, ARAM

Historical Cello professor

Catherine Rimer is an experienced and versatile cellist and teacher who performs internationally with leading ensembles on both period and modern instruments.

She studied the cello with Emma Ferrand at the RNCM, Alexander Baillie at the RAM, Steven Doane at the Eastman School of Music, New York and with Steven Isserlis at Prussia Cove, with the aid of numerous scholarships.

She has been a member of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s English Baroque Soloists and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique since 1996, playing co-principal on numerous projects including the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage throughout 2000.

She has also been a member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for over 20 years, playing guest principal on occasion, including several digital concerts on OAE Player - Strings Reunited (Grieg, Elgar), Embers of Romanticism (Wagner, R. Strauss) and most recently for Isabelle Faust and Antonella Manacorda in a programme of Schumann filmed at the Royal Festival Hall.

As a guest principal she has performed repertoire from Monteverdi (Vespers with The Sixteen and Harry Christophers) to Stravinsky (Le Sacre de Printemps with Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth in the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie). Other guest leading includes Avison Ensemble, Classical Opera, Dunedin Consort, English National Opera (Charpentier’s Medea, on bass violin) and Ex Cathedra.

Chamber music has always been a feature – she joined the principal players of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht in The Night Shift series 2017 and more recently in a programme of Cello Quintets in a London pub. As soloist she has performed concerti by Haydn, John Garth and Beethoven ('Triple' with Nadja Zwiener and Maggie Cole) on period instruments.

Catherine has co-led workshops on the Monteverdi Apprentice Scheme, given Bach masterclasses at the Eastman School, N.Y. and at the University of North Carolina and taught on Ithaca College's Exchange Program.

In January 2022 she was Cello Professor at 'FEMUSC' run by Alex Klein, where she took daily continuo classes and performed works by Rameau, Bach, Beethoven and Villa-Lobos along with Marc Destrubé, Fernando Cordella and Ricardo Kanji at the fortnight-long 'Festival of Music Santa Catarina' in Brazil.

Faculties / departments: Historical Performance