Jonathan Byers

Belfast-born Jonathan Byers studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London with David Strange, and then completed a two-year postgraduate course in Historical Performance with Jennifer Ward-Clarke.

Aside from his work with the Quartet, Jonathan has a busy freelance career performing as guest principal with many orchestras and period instrument groups, including the Academy of Ancient Music, English Concert, Gabrieli Consort, Irish Baroque Orchestra, The Sixteen, CM90, La Serenissima and the Early Opera Company.

Further afield, Jonathan has worked with John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and worked as guest principal with the Symphony Orchestra of India, and also with the Weinberger Kammerorchester in Zurich, directed by Gábor Takács-Nagy.

Jonathan is much in demand as a soloist and has also given solo recitals across Europe and in Washington DC and China. In 2012, he will perform Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations with the Ulster Orchestra in Belfast, a concert which will be recorded by the BBC.

He was awarded the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Young Artist Platform Scheme award in 2004, which enabled him to travel to the Netherlands, Germany and Italy for lessons with some of the finest baroque cellists in the world.

Aside from playing work, Jonathan also manages the Marylebone Camerata, a London-based session orchestra.

In May 2011, Jonathan was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, an honorary award for former students of the Academy who have made a notable contribution to the music profession.

Jonathan plays on a c.1750 cello by John Johnson.