Thomas Kaufmann

Cello

Member since 2013

Questions

When and how did your path cross with CAMERATA BERN?
My first contact with CAMERATA BERN was through an e-mail from our former manager Louis Dupras asking if I could play a tour in summer 2011. After a lot of back and forth I unfortunately had to turn it down because of a change in dates. A little more than a year later I received another invitation from Louis. This time I was able to come, and I travelled to Bern for the first time in my life in summer 2012. I remember well how warmly I was welcomed, the familiar, friendly, open atmosphere. I immediately felt a special connection with Martin Merker. I took a swim in the Aare. I had met Käthi Steuri shortly beforehand at a project in Lucerne and Ankara and with her, as well, it felt like we had been playing together for many years. A sense of closeness. I also remember the always amiable smile of Miša Stefanović, who was concertmaster back then. Only later did I come to realise that most of the ensemble members were not present at that project. I met the rest in autumn 2012, when I started to come to Bern on a regular basis.

What makes your instrument unique?
Its unpredictability. At times my lover, at times a part of me, at times repulsive, at times my comfort…

When was the last time you forgot to bring music to a concert?
This has actually never happened to me. But I did often have dreams (nightmares?) about this happening in my student years.

About Thomas Kaufmann

Thomas Kaufmann was born in Graz, Austria, and grew up in East Styria. Music has been in his life from early on: his parents and siblings playing folk music at home with his parents and siblings, his grandfather being active in the town band and his great-grandmother being a passionate folk singer.

Thomas Kaufmann describes Heinrich Schiff in Vienna and Eberhard Feltz in Berlin as his most important teachers.

Concert engagements have taken him throughout Europe as well as to North, Central and South America, Australia, Africa, Japan and India.

For more than a decade, Thomas Kaufmann worked as the cellist of the Trio Imàge, focusing intensively on the piano trio literature. The trio won an ECHO Klassik award in 2014 with its complete recording of the piano trios of the German-Argentinian composer Mauricio Kagel.

From 2014 to 2016, Thomas Kaufmann held a professorship for cello at the Rostock University of Music and Drama. Between 2018 and 2020, he was a lecturer for the postgraduate course at the Cuban-European Youth Academy in Havana/Cuba.

Thomas Kaufmann currently lives in Berlin and Austria.