The bassist, composer, performer and visual artist starts her new role in September 2023

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Photo: Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance/ Juno Snowdon

Double bassist Valentina Ciardelli

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Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance has announced the appointment of Valentina Ciardelli as professor in its strings department, starting this autumn 2023. Ciardelli is an alumna of Trinity Laban, where she studied with double bassist Leon Bosch and served as his teaching assistant.

Ciardelli began her musical studies as a pianist and started to play double bass in in 2010. She graduated from the Istituto Musicale L. Boccherini in Lucca in 2014, going on to receive a master’s degree at the Royal College of Music in 2016. Further studies at Trinity Laban saw Ciardelli receive scholarships from Trinity College London and the Leverhulme Trust. She was awarded Trinity Laban’s Carne Trust Junior Fellowship from 2018 to 2019.

Ciardelli’s accolades and competition success include first prize in the RCM Double Bass Competition 2016, the Vernon Elliot Double bass Competition 2018, the Vivian Joseph Classical Concerto Competition 2018, String Category and the De Simone and Partners prize in the Chamber Music Festival in Rome. She also won a place with a scholarship in the Accademia Chigiana in summer 2018 with maestro Giuseppe Ettorre.

She has participated in the Gustav Mahler Academy in 2016 as well as the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s training scheme. In 2019, she enjoyed an artist residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and has since given solo performances in venues such as Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Teatro Argentina in Rome and London’s St. Martin’s in the Fields and Wigmore Hall.

Ciardelli has served on the jury at the 2023 International Society of Bassists (ISB) competition, youth solo division. With harpist Anna Astesano, she is a member of ’The Girls in the Magnesium Dress’, a duo dedicated to performing and promoting new repertoire for harp and double bass. She is the founder of the ’How I met Puccini’, creating arrangements of Puccini opera arias for double bass and other instruments.

 She plays a 2014 Scipioni bass made in Mantua.

Valentina Ciardelli will feature in a future episode of The Strad Podcast

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