Marie Bitlloch

French/Catalan cellist Marie Bitlloch studied in Perpignan Concervatoire, Paris Conservatoire, and the RNCM in Manchester respectively with Michel Lefort, Philippe Muller and Ralph Kirshbaum. At the RNCM, she met her fellow Elias string quartet members and decided to stay in England and dedicate herself to chamber music.

Marie has given recitals throughout France, Spain and England and has appeared as a soloist with orchestras such as the Goncal Comellas orchestra, the Orchestra de cambra d’Andorra, the Orchestre Languedoc-Roussillon, the RNCM Symphony orchestra,the Chester symphony orchestra, the Gloucestershire Symphony orchestra, the Stockport Symphony orchestra… She has performed alongside artists such as Menahem Pressler, Claude Frank, Valdimir Mendelssohn, Paul Biss, Joseph Silverstein.Participations in music festivals include the Pau Casals festival (Prades) ,the Musique dans les vignes festival (France), the Musica Vitae festival (Sweden), Ravinia’s Steans Institute for young artists (Chicago),the 3 choir festival (Gloucestershire), Santa Fe’s summer festival (New Mexico), Musique de chambre en normandie (France) …

In 1996, Marie was joint second at the Adam competition in New Zealand and won the jury’s prize at the Bach competition in Leipzig one year later. She has won the Muriel Taylor Scholarship and was awarded an incentive grand at the Pierre Fournier award, consequently appearing at the Manchester Cello festival. For three years she was a laureate of the Natexis foundation, Banque populaire who helped her with her musical projects.

She has been a member of the Elias Quartet since 1998.

Marie plays on an eighteen-century anonymous Italian cello on loan to her by the Fond Instrumental Français.