Steuart Pincombe
The American cellist, Steuart Pincombe, quickly made a name for himself as an exquisite interpreter of early and contemporary music who was keen to experiment. Steuart is regularly featured as a soloist and chamber musician in in leading venues across North America and Europe including Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, Concertgebouw Brugge, RADIALSYSTEM V Berlin, Bozar Brussels, Tivoli Vredenburg, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, and the Kauffman Center, but he is equally at home playing in your local cafe or brewery. His playing has garnered wide acclaim from the public and critics alike: The Philadelphia Inquirer calls him “a gorgeous player with perfect intonation, imaginative phrasing”, The Strad Magazine refers to him as a “superb soloist”, virtuoso cellist Giovanni Sollima calls Steuart “a complete artist, true virtuoso and poet, totally at ease with all languages and musical styles”, and an audience member once said “You’da asked me a week ago if I’sa gonna be here, I’da said ‘hell no’. Well I’m here - and I love this stuff [Bach]”.

In addition to his numerous chamber engagements, he has appeared as soloist with ensembles such as Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop (DE), Holland Baroque (NL), Wallfisch Band (UK), Symphonie Atlantique (NL), Apollos Fire (US), and the Springfield (MO) Symphony (US). His concert 'Bach&Beer' was selected by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as one of the 'Top 10 Classical Events of the Year' and a concert in which he appeared as soloist with Rene Schiffer and Apollo's Fire was numbered in London's '5 Best Classical Music Moments of 2014' according to The Telegraph (UK). If you can't hear him live, Steuart makes regular appearances on radio and has been featured on BBC, CBC, NPO, and NPR and has recently begun recording for 7 Mountain Records in Amsterdam.

With the aim of equipping other leading artists to engage with new audiences Steuart and his wife Michelle started the Music in Familiar Spaces Artist Collective which is made up of some of the leading performers of our time. Steuart and Michelle recently moved to Missouri (US) to start a small, off-grid farm.

I love sound. I have always loved sound. Silence is also very important to me. I also love people of all kinds and I like introducing them to different combinations of sound (and silence of course).

After dedicating years of my life to learning about how to present the highest quality of sound combinations, some people along the way liked the way in which I combined sounds and encouraged me to pursue this further. Some hired me for presentations of these sound combinations in buildings all over the world, famous for their ability to project various sound combinations to an audience in an extraordinary way.

Over time, I realized that many people who really would like to hear my sound (and silence) combinations were unable, either because it was too expensive or seemed inaccessible, or they just didn't realize that they would like it. So I decided to change my way of presenting sounds (and silences...). One of my primary focuses as a combiner of sounds and silences is to step into spaces where all sorts of people are comfortable, in hopes of connecting with them through sounds and silences. To that end, I created Music in Familiar Spaces, a project that began as a yearlong tour of North America and now continues as a collective of leading artists all across the globe.