Cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière broke through to international recognition with a first prize at Belgium's Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2017. He has since begun active concert careers as a recitalist, chamber music player, and concerto soloist. Julien-Laferrière was born in Paris on June 25, 1990. He took cello lessons as a youth with René Benedetti, and in 2004, he was admitted to the Paris Conservatory, studying there with Roland Pidoux. Julien-Laferrière moved on to the University of Vienna in 2009 for studies with Heinrich Schiff, also spending six summers (from 2005 to 2011) taking chamber music classes at the Seiji Ozawa International Music Academy in Switzerland. Julien-Laferrière launched his performing career in the early 2010s, performing around France and then abroad with several Czech orchestras and the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, performing the Dvořák and Elgar cello concertos. Julien-Laferrière made his recording debut in 2014, appearing on a Mirare recording of the Brahms Clarinet Trio in A minor, Op. 114, with Adam Laloum and the clarinet sensation Raphaël Sévère. Prizes furthered his career, including those at the Prague Spring Music Festival in 2012 and the Queen Elisabeth win in 2017. He entered the latter contest, he told Res Musica, because "it was an obvious way of being able to have access to concert halls, to certain orchestras, hopefully also to certain conductors." The results were just as he had hoped: over the next several years, he appeared with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (under Valery Gergiev), the RTÉ Orchestra Dublin, and the Essen Philharmonie, as well as many major French orchestras. Julien-Laferrière has given recitals at such prestigious venues as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Auditorium du Louvre, and the Philips Collection in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the Trio Les Esprits with violinist Mi-Sa Yang and pianist Laloum, and he has collaborated with Laloum and other players in duo music. In 2016, Julien-Laferrière released an album of cello sonatas by Brahms, Franck, and Debussy, again with Laloum, and in 2019, he moved to the Alpha label, joining pianist Jonas Vitaud for an album of sonatas by Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, and Edison Denisov. Julien-Laferrière remained active through the COVID-19 pandemic, releasing an album of concertos by Dvořák and Martinů with the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège on Alpha in 2021 and beginning a career as a conductor with the Orchestre Consuelo, which he had founded in 2019, on an album of Brahms Serenades on Mirare in 2022. That year, his performances at the Queen Elisabeth Competition were included on an album released by the competition. In 2023, Julien-Laferrière returned as a cellist on Alpha with the Orchestre National de France, performing works by Henri Dutilleux and Pascal Dusapin. ~ James Manheim, Rovi