Hortense Airault

Hortense Airault is a French cellist, composer, and performer whose work blends contemporary repertoire, composition, improvisation, and interdisciplinary creation. Her practice engages with contemporary issues, emphasizing interdisciplinary collaboration and the exploration of stage formats.

Her approach has been recognized with awards including the Fritz Gerber Award from the Lucerne Festival, the Tremplin Leenaards Prize, the Contrechamps Prize, prize at Musique et Vin au Clos Vougeot (which allowed her to receive an instrument on loan for several years.), first prize at the Violoncellenseine competition.

Passionate about contemporary music, she collaborates with ensembles such as Contrechamps, Ensemble Intercontemporain & Ensemble Ulysse, ONCEIM, Nomos, NEC Ensemble, and develops interdisciplinary projects with her ensembles Quatuor MOMO and Duo Imminent. She has performed at festivals including Lucerne Festival, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Mixtur Festival (Barcelona), Archipel Festival (Geneva), ManiFeste Festival (Paris), and Musical Chairs Festival (Canada), and has participated in academies such as Stauffer Academy in Cremona, Ulysses Academy, les Ateliers du violoncelle and the Académie de Villecroze in France.

Born in 1999 in Paris, Hortense spent her childhood on the island of Mayotte, where she discovered the cello. She studied at the CRR de Paris in Thomas Duran’s class and then at the Haute École de Musique de Genève in Ophélie Gaillard’s class, completing a Master Concert program with a Composer-Performer specialization under Ophélie Gaillard and Joshua Hyde. She then pursued a Master’s in Composition Creative Practice at the Hochschule der Künste Bern.

As a composer, she studied with Simon Steen Andersen, Cathy Van Eck, Angela Bürger, and Franziska Baumann in Bern, and with Luis Naón, Arturo Corrales, and Joshua Hyde in Geneva. She has received commissions from Ensemble Contrechamps, Orchestre de l’Université de Genève, Quatuor MOMO, and Les Ateliers du Violoncelle. Her works L’Une e(s)t l’Autre and Corps Accords are published by 22D Music, and she composed and improvised for the contemporary circus show Immaqaa by the MPTA company.

Her encounter with Joëlle Léandre introduced her to improvisation and creation. She co-founded Duo Imminent with Ana Parejo Belando, a project dedicated to free improvisation and collaborative composition with electronics. In parallel, she is a member of the Free Spirit Ensemble (directed by Ibrahim Maalouf) and Side ProYect, a free improvisation quartet (electric guitar, saxophone, drums, and cello).

Deeply dedicated to string quartet performance, she studied with Quatuor Belcea, Quatuor Voce, Gábor Takács-Nagy, and Noémie Bialobroda, completing a CAS in string quartet performance in Quatuor Belcea’s class. With her ensemble Quatuor MOMO, she won first prize at the “Osez!” 2025 competition, third prize at the Orpheus 2024 competition, and received both the Daisy de Saugy Prize and the Ponticello Prize at “Osez!” 2023.

Hortense seeks to embody the spirit of a 21st-century musician: curious, open, and committed to weaving meaningful connections between diverse artistic worlds.