LYDIA SHELLEY

British cellist Lydia Shelley grew up in a family of musicians and was immersed in opera from an early age. Chamber music, and particularly the string quartet, became a defining passion, nurtured through her work with two important mentors: the late Christopher Rowland of the Fitzwilliam Quartet and Günter Pichler of the Alban Berg Quartet.

Lydia studied with Hannah Roberts at the Royal Northern College of Music and Richard Lester at the Royal College of Music, and began her professional life as a founding member of the Finzi Quartet. After moving to France, she joined the Paris-based Quatuor Voce, with whom she performed for a decade at venues including the Philharmonie de Paris, Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw and the Elbphilharmonie. The quartet’s extensive discography received numerous international awards and distinctions, and the ensemble was in residence at the Haute École de Musique de Genève from 2021 to 2024.

Since leaving the Quatuor Voce in 2023, Lydia has returned to the wider repertoire of the cello, developing a series of long-term projects while retaining chamber music at the heart of her musical life. These have included performances of the complete cycle of Beethoven’s five sonatas for cello and piano, alongside an increasingly deep exploration of Bach’s six Suites for solo cello. In 2024, Lydia and Gary Hoffman presented the Suites in a shared cycle, conceived alongside a new work for two cellos commissioned by Lydia from French composer Graciane Finzi. In 2026, Lydia presented her first complete cycle of all six Suites in a single concert for the first time, including the Sixth Suite on a five-string piccolo cello. This continuing exploration shapes an important part of her 2026–27 season, with a complete cycle at Paris’s Bal Blomet in April 2027, alongside further projects centered on the Suites currently in development.

Chamber music remains central to Lydia’s work. She is a founding member of Trio Zénon with violinist Charlotte Juillard and pianist Emmanuel Christien. Rather than approaching the piano trio as a fixed formation, the ensemble builds programmes around the changing relationships between its three instruments, placing the core piano trio repertoire alongside sonatas, duos, arrangements and transcriptions.

As a soloist, Lydia has recently performed concertos by Dvořák, Elgar, Schumann and Saint-Saëns, including a return to Mexico in 2025 to perform Elgar’s Cello Concerto under the baton of Alondra de la Parra.

Her curiosity has also led to projects beyond the traditional classical repertoire. Songlines, created with British singer-songwriter Piers Faccini in 2025, explores their shared British musical heritage, tracing a path from Henry Purcell and traditional folk music to the present day and to Faccini’s own songs. The project brings Faccini’s voice and guitar into dialogue with the distinctive sound world of Lydia’s five-string piccolo cello and gut strings.

Since 2025, Lydia has collaborated with French theatre company Collectif Eudaimonia as cellist and musical director for its production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Fully integrated into the staging, she performs throughout the production and also takes on the role of the Prince of Verona. The collaboration continues into the 2026–27 season.

Lydia performs on a French cello made circa 1670 as well as an eighteenth-century five-string piccolo cello by Delannoy. Her bow was made in 1855 by Joseph Henry.