Rohan de Saram

Rohan de Saram

In November 2005 Rohan bid farewell to the Arditti Quartet in order to pursue his own artistic vision. He works now with a variety of artists, friends and composers, bringing together music from a range of musical periods and parts of the world, both eastern and western, classical and contemporary, composed music and improvisations, with players from many musical backgrounds.

Although he has been more recently known as an outstanding performer of contemporary music, it was as a classical artist that he made his name as a teenager and in his twenties and thirties. Having studied cello from the age of 11 with Gaspar Cassado in Italy in Siena and Florence, he was awarded, at the age of 17, the coveted Suggia award to study in the UK with John Barbirolli and in Puerto Rico with Pablo Casals. At the invitation of Dmitri Mitropoulos, who described him in 1957 as “a rare genius… .a born musician… an amazing…cellist”, Rohan was invited to give his Carnegie Hall debut in 1960 with the New York Philharmonic, playing Khatchaturian’s Cello Concerto under the baton of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski.