Carina Drury - cello

Carina has held a lifelong love for music. She enjoys a busy career as a chamber musician and continuo player and her playing has been described by BBC Radio 3 as ‘singing across the centuries’. She was awarded a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London where she studied with Philip Sheppard and Jonathan Manson, and later with Richard Lester at the Guildhall, supported by the THCW trust.

Carina toured as principal cello with the European Union Baroque Orchestra in 2010, and has since performed as guest principal with the Irish Baroque Orchestra, Dunedin Consort, La Serenissima, Gabrieli Players, Oxford Bach Soloists and Camerata Ireland.

As a soloist she has performed a C.P.E. Bach Cello Concerto at the National Concert Hall in Dublin with the Orchestra of St. Cecilia (2013) and Vivaldi Double Cello Concerto with Vlad Waltham and La Serenissima at St Martin in the Fields (2022, 2023).

Carina has also hugely enjoyed delving into Geminiani, Bocchi and O’Carolan’s music for her first solo album ‘Irlandiani’ , realeased to critical acclaim in November 2020, thanks to Arts Council of England funding. The album has been played on BBC Radio 3, RTE Lyric FM and Deutschlandfunk Radio. Carina was awarded an Arts Council Ireland Emerging Artist Grant in 2021 in order to perform her album programme live in her hometown of Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, and she has toured the album programme in London, Dublin and Cork with her ensemble Irlandiani.

In 2022 Carina and her ensemble Irlandiani were awarded a Continuo Foundation grant in order to record a new album programme , Smock Alley, which was released in 2023.

When not playing the cello, Carina can be found baking cakes at home which she brings to rehearsals to share with her colleagues!