Sarah Gait

Biography

British cellist Sarah Gait is an innovative musician and creator. Recently awarded the 2020 ISA Digital Creative Award from the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Vienna, for her video Heroes: the Shadows of a Tragic Mind, Sarah has appeared as a soloist on BBC Radio 3, on which her compositions have also been broadcast.
In 2019, Sarah performed the improvised solo part of her own composition with the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester at the Cello Akademie Rutesheim, Germany. A passionate composer and improviser too, her prize-winning works have been recorded at the BBC Maida Vale Studios in London, while she has appeared on the concert stage in improvised performance with eminent musicians such as Markus Stockhausen and Florian Weber. She regularly collaborates with leading composers, working personally with Magnus Lindberg, Paul Patterson and the late Dmitri Smirnov, with multiple new works dedicated to her and world première performances.
Sarah has been invited to perform on many of London’s biggest stages, including King’s Place, The Southbank Centre, St John’s Smith Square and The Royal Albert Hall’s ‘Love Classical’ series, as well as throughout the UK and Europe.  She performs with Southbank Sinfonia at St John’s Smith Square, as well as with chamber ensemble Platform Music, recent Winners of the Royal Philharmonic Society Enterprise Fund. Platform Music, which Sarah directs alongside award-winning American violinist Luke Hsu and Peruvian violist Varinia Oyola Rebaza, specialises in the promotion of contemporary and classical chamber music in alternative concert settings. 
A Masters Graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, London, studying with Guy Johnston and Robert Cohen, Sarah is privileged to participate in masterclasses with many of today’s leading cellists, including Claudio Bohórquez, Adrian Brendel, Mario Brunello, Colin Carr, David Geringas, Frans Helmerson, Gary Hoffmann, Gregor Horsch, Ralph Kirshbaum, Miklos Perenyi, Christoph Richter, Hannah Roberts, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt and Jakob Spahn. Sarah has participated in festivals such as Barenboim-Said Akademie Masterclasses (Germany), Festival Virtuoso & Bel Canto (Italy), Lake District Summer Music (UK), Old Ox/Aurora (Sweden), Sion Akademie (Switzerland) and Sommerakademie Bad Leonfelden (Austria). She was recently invited to join the Schlossakademie masterclasses of Professors Frans Helmerson and Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, and the Berlin/Israel based Musethica scheme, as well as performing at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, as a scholarship student in the class of David Geringas. 
Recitals this season include at 22 Mansfield Street for the Nicholas Boas Trust, whose generous support Sarah acknowledges, alongside that of Arts Council England, EMI Music Sound Foundation, the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Sir John Barbirolli Memorial Foundation, and generous private donors. She has just recorded a new cello sonata by Brazilian composer Rafael Marino Arcaro, for release this Autumn, supported by the RVW Trust. Sarah is the Winner of a Cumbria Life Culture Award 2019, as well as the BBC Young Composer Competition, featuring a performance at the BBC Proms. Dedicated to the inspiration of young people in classical music, Sarah appears as Ambassador for the BBC Proms Inspire Scheme.
Sarah plays on an 18th-century cello on kind loan from the private collection of Dr Peter Hauber in Berlin.