About
Ilaria Brun is a cellist praised for playing of unusual candour — a concerto soloist and recitalist heard across the UK and Europe, and one half of the Brun–Hale Duo, whose partnership with the pianist Tomas Hale is now in its second decade.
She spent six seasons as principal cello of the Averill Sinfonia before leaving to give the solo and duo work the room it was asking for — a decision she describes as trading a very good seat for the whole stage. Since then she has played the Elgar, Dvořák and Shostakovich concertos with orchestras across the UK and the Low Countries, and given recitals from Leeds to Ghent to Turin.
The duo with Tomas Hale began in a college practice room over a disagreement about tempo that neither of them has conceded. Their album Night Songs — Fauré, Debussy and Poulenc, recorded in three long evenings — was released on Lantern Records in the spring, and their concert diary is the spine of her season.
She founded the Hollowmere Festival, a late-August weekend of chamber music in a Norfolk tithe barn, and still carries the chairs in herself on the first morning.
Instrument
She plays a Turin cello of the 1890s, maker unrecorded, bought at auction with a loan she has nearly finished repaying — and a modern instrument by Ewa Sandström that she keeps for outdoor concerts and for weather the old one refuses.
Positions
Hollowmere Festival
Programmes the festival's late-August weekend of chamber music in the tithe barn at Hollowmere, and runs its young artists platform — four players each year, chosen by ear from an open call.
The Averill Sinfonia
Six seasons leading the cello section, including the orchestra's first complete Elgar cycle. She returns most years as a concerto soloist, which both sides describe as the best of the arrangement.