Alison Wells

Alison Wells has had a varied career as a chamber musician that has taken her throughout
Europe and North America, to Asia, and to Africa. She was a founding member of the UK-based
Pirasti Trio, whose performances were described as "absolutely incandescent" (The Strad) and
"eloquent, unfailingly stylish" (Gramophone), and whose recordings on ASV were recommended
by BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, International Record Review, and Fanfare. She has
broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Classic FM, Dutch National Radio, the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation, North German Radio, and WQXR in New York. She was also featured in a British
Channel 4 TV documentary on the Chamber Music of Penderecki, working with the composer.

Alison is a graduate of Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music, studying with
Ralph Kirshbaum and David Strange. She holds a doctorate from Yale University, where she
studied with Aldo Parisot as a Harkness Fellow. In 1988 she joined the City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra, under Simon Rattle, and became an Associate of the Royal Academy of
Music. The following year she gave her London recital debut at the South Bank, sponsored by
the Maisie Lewis Young Artists' Trust.

Alison is a sought-after cello teacher who has given masterclasses worldwide. A former faculty
member of the Peabody Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute of Music in the USA, and of
Trinity Laban, the Purcell School, and Wells Cathedral School in the UK, she currently teaches at
the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She has performed and taught at numerous international
festivals, including return visits for many summers to the Heifetz Institute, ENCORE School for
Strings, and Madeline Island Chamber Music Festival in the USA. She continues to serve on the
faculties of the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Vermont, USA, and of Encore Music
Projects in the UK. She has had a long interest in the benefits of somatic training for musicians,
and in 2022 she became the first British string player to qualify as a Licensed Body Mapping
Educator.