Alison Wells

Alison Wells has toured as a chamber musician throughout Europe and North America, and in Asia and East Africa. She was a founding member of the UK-based Pirasti Trio, whose performances and recordings were described as "absolutely incandescent" (The Strad) and "eloquent, unfailingly stylish" (Gramophone). She was featured in a BBC Channel 4 TV documentary on the Chamber Music of Penderecki, working with the composer. A graduate of Cambridge University, the Royal Academy of Music, and Yale, she studied with Ralph Kirshbaum and Aldo Parisot. In 1988 she joined the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, under Simon Rattle and gave her London recital debut at the South Bank, sponsored by the Maisie Lewis Trust. A former faculty member of the Peabody Conservatory and CIM, she currently teaches at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She has appeared at numerous international festivals, including the Heifetz Institute, ENCORE School for Strings, and Madeline Island Festival. With a long interest in the benefits of somatic training for musicians, she recently  became the first European cellist to qualify as a Licensed Body Mapping Educator.