Rainer Crosett

Biography supplied for the 2024 competition.

Hailed as “sensational” and for playing with “total commitment and conviction” (Seen & Heard International 2024), cellist Rainer Crosett is quickly building an international career as an artist of uncommon sensitivity and creativity. From his Wigmore Hall recital debut in 2019 as the first American cellist ever to win the Pierre Fournier Award, to his Spring 2023 concerto debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, he regularly appears as a soloist and chamber musician on many of the most renowned stages throughout Europe and North America. Rainer’s passion for the ways music relates to other fields continues to yield boundary-breaking projects and programs. He is co-founder of a new interdisciplinary chamber music society in Berlin, Tonhain Kollektiv, and has performed widely at festivals including Yellow Barn, Ravinia Steans Institute, Grachtenfestival Amsterdam, HearAndNow Festival Amsterdam, Romsey Chamber Music Festival, Miesbach Kammermusikfestival, Eggenfelden klassisch, Rheingau Musik Festival, Music@Menlo, Trondheim kammermusikkfestival, Roman River Festival, and Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music. He has also worked closely with leading composers of our time and performed with ensembles such as the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and the Parker Quartet. As a guest principal cellist, he has appeared with the Oslo Philharmonic and Dresdner Philharmonie. A graduate of Harvard College magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in Philosophy, he was the recipient of a Harvard Artist Development Fellowship and the Lucy Allen Paton Prize for excellence in the arts & humanities. With previous degrees in music from New England Conservatory and the USC Thornton School of Music, he is currently completing further graduate studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin with Jens Peter Maintz. His previous teachers include Ralph Kirshbaum, Paul Katz, and Mark Churchill.