Thomas Kaufmann

Cellist Thomas Kaufmann is active as an orchestral player, a chamber musician, and a soloist, and is also an educator. He is the solo cellist in the small orchestra Camerata Bern and has performed with Trio Imàge and other chamber groups. Kaufmann has taught cello in various places, including Cuba. In 2025, he had a solo role on the Camerata Bern release Exile.Kaufmann was born in 1981 in Graz, Austria, and grew up in the rural East Styria region. Folk music pervaded his family; family folk music sessions were the norm, his grandfather played in a municipal band, and his great-grandmother was a noted folksinger. Kaufmann studied in Graz with Hildgund Posch and then went on for lessons with Heinrich Schiff in Vienna and with Eberhard Feltz in Berlin. In 2013, he joined the Camerata Bern, where he continues to serve as solo cellist. The following year, he became a member of Trio Imàge, with which he continues to perform. He made his recording debut with that group in 2014 on the album Mauricio Kagel: Piano Trios 1-3; that release won Germany's prestigious ECHO Klassik Prize.In his various capacities as an orchestral player, chamber musician, and soloist, Kaufmann has assembled an unusually diverse touring record. He has appeared across Europe and the Americas, in East Asia, Australia, and as far afield as Africa. He has been widely heard at festivals, including the BBC Proms, the Lucerne Festival, the November Fest in Chennai, India, and the Kyoto International Music Festival. Kaufmann taught at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Rostock, Germany, from 2014 to 2016, and from 2018 to 2020, he taught graduate-level (postgraduate) cello courses at the Cuban-European Youth Academy in Havana, Cuba. He has made several more recordings with Trio Imàge, and in 2025, he joined Camerata Bern and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja on the recital album Exile, released on the Alpha label.
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