The cellist will assume the role of professor for the Advanced Cello Course at the start of the 2024/25 academic year

Frans-Helmerson

Cellist Frans Helmerson | stauffer.org

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The Stauffer Academy in Cremona, Italy, has announced the appointment of Frans Helmerson as professor of the Advanced Cello Course. Helmerson succeeds Antonio Meneses, who led the programme for nearly a decade.

Helmerson brings his extensive concert and teaching experience to the role. As a soloist, he has collaborated with leading conductors including  Seiji Ozawa, Evgeni Svetlanov, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Frübeck de Burgos, Kurt Sanderling and Mstislav Rostropovich.

He is a regular guest at major international festivals as a chamber musician, including the Verbier Festival, the Pablo Casals Festival in Prades and the Ravinia Festival. He has also served for several years as artistic director of the Umea-Korsholm International Chamber Music Festival. In 2002 he co-founded the Michelangelo Quartet. 

As an educator, he has been principal professor of cello at the Kronberg Academy since 2006 and at the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin since 2016.  He has also been guest professor at the Juilliard School in New York since 2012, as well as at the University for Music Hanns Eisler in Berlin from 2011 to 2016. He was a teacher for several years at the University for Music and Dance in Cologne and at the Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid.

Helmerson plays a cello by Stefan-Peter Greiner.

’I am very happy to have the opportunity to work with young and promising Italian cellists,’ said Helmerson. ’I am grateful to the Stauffer Foundation for the trust they have placed in me.’

’It is an honour and a pleasure for the Stauffer Foundation to welcome a musician of such stature into its Academy,’ commented Alessandro Tantardini, president of the Stauffer Foundation.

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