Kate Bennett Wadsworth
Cello
Kate Bennett Wadsworth is a cellist and gambist devoted to historical performance of all periods, with a special research interest in 19th-century performing practice. She has appeared at festivals across Europe and North America with ensembles such as B’Rock, Tafelmusik, Arion, the Gabrieli Consort, and the Academy of Ancient Music, and given lecture-recitals and masterclasses at the Juilliard School, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, the Orpheus Insitute, and the Utrecht Early Music Festival. Thanks to funding from the Leverhulme Trust and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Kate recently completed a practice-led research project on the relationship between the Schumann Cello Concerto and the cellists of his time, culminating in an annotated edition of the concerto (Bärenreiter), a recording of her new arrangement of the work for cello and string quartet (Consone Quartet, Deux-Elles), and an article on the astonishing ways 19th-century cellists reworked the concerto for public performance (Orpheus). Kate studied modern cello with Laurence Lesser, baroque cello with Jaap ter Linden, and 19th-century HIP with Clive Brown (or Friedrich Grützmacher, depending on one’s point of view), after earning a Bachelors degree in Scandinavian Studies at Harvard College. She now lives in Norwich, England, and enjoys learning from her doctoral students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
Her sense of musical gesture and line has the strength and grace of a wild animal: Her melodies soar, not like a rocket, but like an eagle, responding to every turn of harmony and thought the way the bird responds to changing currents of air.
Early Music America
