Sarah Cunningham

Sarah Cunningham is among the world's best-known players of the viola da gamba, with extensive activities as a performer and educator in Europe and in her native U.S. She has a large recording catalog dating back to the early 1980s. Cunningham was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, on December 2, 1951. She began her studies of viols in Boston in 1969, when the instruments were still quite rare in the U.S. She enrolled at Harvard that year and attended the Longy School of Music at Harvard from 1970 to 1972, studying viola da gamba with Gian Lyman Silbiger, and went on for further work at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague, Netherlands, with Wieland Kuijken. Cunningham also studied Baroque cello with Wouter Moller and modern cello with Hermann Busch of the Busch Quartet. She spent much of the 1970s as a freelance performer and teacher in the Boston area, and she continued these activities after moving to London in 1981. She holds dual citizenship, having become a naturalized citizen of the United Kingdom in 1999. Cunningham has been active as a soloist and ensemble member. Beginning in 1973, she performed with such groups as the Boston Camerata and Banchetto Musicale. In 1982, she co-founded the ensemble Sonnerie with violinist Monica Huggett and performed with it and its associated groups for some years. Beginning in that year, she began to appear as a guest with such major European groups as Hesperion XX, Fretwork, and Phantasm. Her recording career began in 1985 with an appearance on the album Dramatic Laments by Les Eléments. Cunningham has given solo recitals on the U.S. East Coast, Montreal, London, and many other European cities. From 1990 to 2000, she served as professor of viola da gamba at Akademie für Alte Musik (later the Hochschule für Künste) in Bremen. Cunningham moved to Ireland in 1999 and founded the East Cork Early Music Festival in 2003, serving for several years as its artistic director. Returning to the U.S., she has been an adjunct faculty member at the Juilliard School in Manhattan since 2010 and has also taught at Princeton University. She has appeared on more than 45 recordings and has issued several solo albums, including a collection of Bach's sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord in 2021 on the Avie label, accompanied by Richard Egarr.
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