Gdańsk Music Festival

Camille Thomas

"A new star of the cello is discovered" Jens Rasmussen, DR Radio Denmark 2014


Nominated as Newcomer of the year 2014 by the French-Grammys ‘ Les Victoires de la Musique’, the Franco-Belgian cellist Camille Thomas was chosen by Musiq'3 - RTBF to represent Belgium at the European Broadcasting Union Competition, where she was awarded the 1st price and named “New Talent of the Year 2014”. In 2017 she was awarded an ECHO Klassik Preis and she signed as an exclusive artist with Deutsche Grammophon international, becoming the first cellist signed in 40 Years by the prestigious yellow label.

Camille is conquering the world stage at a staggering pace. Camille already worked with conductors like Paavo Järvi, Mikko Franck, Marc Soustrot, Darrell Ang, Kent Nagano, Stéphane Denève and with orchestras such as the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Academia Santa Cecilia, Sinfonia Varsovia, Staatsorchester Hamburg in the Elbphilharmonie, the Lucerne Festival Strings in the Herkulessaal in Munich, the Orchestre National de Bordeaux, Brussels Philharmonic, and so on.
Mikko Franck recently invited her to step in for Sol Gabetta with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France for a very successful concert praised by all the critics in Hannover.

The Turkish composer and pianist Fazil Say wrote his cello concerto Never Give Up for Camille. The world premiere was on 3 April 2018 in the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris under Douglas Boyd.

Camille studied in Frans Helmerson’s and Wolfgang-Emmanuel Schmidt's class at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin and Weimar, after working with Marcel Bardon and Philippe Muller in Paris and Stephan Forck in Berlin.

Camille plays the Stradivarius “Feuermann” (1730) thanks to the Nippon Music Foundation and a bow by Eugène Sartory kindly on extended loan from the Fondation Roi Baudoin - Fonds Bollandsee.