Cellist Kieran Carter currently enjoys a busy freelance life as an orchestral player, working regularly with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and others. He is also in demand as a leader with other orchestras around the UK, most notably as the principal cellist of the rejuvenated Bath Festival Orchestra, which continues to grow and give exciting, fresh concerts with exciting repertoire around the country to critical acclaim.

Kieran is an avid chamber musician and has taken part in many festivals around the UK, including those in Southwell, Southrepps, Oundle and the Alderney. Other highlights include performances playing chamber works by Roxanna Panufnik at Wigmore Hall, and a performance of Mendelssohn’s String Octet at the Royal College of Music with the legendary Maxim Vengerov on 1st Violin. He also loves teaching and outreach work having worked at the Marryat Players chamber courses, the Sound and Music summer school at Purcell School of Music, and as an ambassador for the Benedetti Foundation.

Kieran is a big advocate for contemporary music, regularly performing lesser known works for solo cello. These include works by Penderecki, Mayuzumi, Vasks and Jordan Stockdale, whose work ‘Eleven Nested Stories from David’ he premiered in 2020 at the Royal College of Music. He has also worked with the new music group Explore Ensemble and is a regular at the annual London contemporary music festival. A composer and arranger himself, his four movement cello octet ‘Quiet Places in Colour’, virtuosic, classically orchestrated adaptations of euphoric garage music by UK DJ Jamie XX, is set to premiere next year with seven dear cellist friends and colleagues. 

He completed both undergraduate and masters degrees at the Royal College of Music where he was high in demand as an orchestral principal, notably under the batons of Vladimir Ashkenazy, John Wilson, and the late Bernard Haitink. Graduating in 2020, his studies were inspiring thanks to his internationally respected, inimitable cello professor and musical mentor, Melissa Phelps.

From March to September 2024, Kieran is starring as one of three ‘spirit string players’ in The Lost Estate’s daring and lauded immersive theatre experience ‘The Great Murder Mystery’, an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’.