Cellist Astrid Schween has gained a rich following as a soloist, chamber artist and teacher. Since joining the Juilliard String Quartet and Juilliard Cello Faculty in 2016, she has appeared at many of the world’s great concert halls and collaborated with performers Itzhak Perlman, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Emmanuel Ax. She has been featured on National Public Radio, in The Strad magazine, and as an invited speaker at the Library of Congress.
Astrid Schween made her concerto debut with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic at age 16. She received her degrees from the Juilliard School, and was mentored in London by the great cellist Jacqueline DuPré. Other teachers included Leonard Rose, Harvey Shapiro and Bernard Greenhouse. During summers at the Marlboro Festival, she performed with Rudolf Serkin and Joshua Bell.
As a member of the Lark Quartet, she received the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and Gold Medal at the Shostakovich International Competition.
Recent recitals and master classes have taken her to Houston, Denver, Cleveland, Memphis, Cincinnati and San Francisco, with festival appearances at Tanglewood, where she performed in recital with Shai Wosner, and the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, where she collaborated with James Ehnes and Orion Weiss.
Astrid Schween served as longtime faculty at the Perlman Music Program and Interlochen Center for the Arts. Her recordings appear on the Sony, Arabesque, Decca/Argo, CRI, New World, JRI, Centaur, NAR, and Point labels. In 2024, she contributed a series of instructional videos for the popular platform ToneBase.