Marié Pierinna Rivas Carrero – 1st Prize with Special Mention, Cello
NINA RIVAS
The young cellist Nina Rivas was awarded a full scholarship in 2019 to study at the Royal College of Music in London, under the tutelage of renowned Armenian cellist Alexander Chaushian. She was recipient of the Wall Trust Award for young Artists.
Nina is currently completing her fourth year at the institution and is realizing an intense calendar of recitals, both in Spain and in the UK, alongside the worldwide recognized artists Sergei Bezrodny, (with whom she has recently performed at the famous Museo Evaristo Valle of Gijón and have been re-invited to perform on their next season´s concert series of chamber music), and renowned Venezuelan pianist Clara Rodriguez, with whom Nina was selected to participate in the UK’S Echoes Festival of Latin Classical Music, as part of the Música y Mujer series. Both were chosen to represent ‘Female Icons of Latin America’ interpreting together pieces by important women such as, Violeta Parra, Chabuca Granda, Teresa Carreño, and Diana Arismendi, whose piece Elegos for cello and piano was given its world premiere at the 1901 Art’s Club of London by Clara and Nina.
In July of 2019, Nina won the Upper Mill Young Musician of the Year, competition that took place in the city of Manchester and was invited to perform as soloist, Edward Elgar’s cello concerto with the Oldham Symphony Orchestra, and in 2015 Nina was a semi-finalist of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition.
In 2018, Nina was the youngest cellist ever to be selected as principal cello to lead the performance of Gustav Mahler’s eighth symphony, a concert which was realized by the Chetham’s Symphony Orchestra at the Bridgewater Hall of Manchester with the honorary presence of Prince Edward of England.
Nina is constantly sought for to perform with diverse chamber ensembles in countries such as Norway, Switzerland, Germany, England, and the city of Dubai. In addition, she has been invited to perform as soloist at the prestigious Coronet Theatre of London.
The young cellist has participated in masterclasses and worked closely with internationally acclaimed cellists such as Xenia Jankovic, Alban Gehardt, Adrian Brendel, and Adolfo Gutiérrez Arenas.
Nina Rivas is an alumni of Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester. She studied at the school from 2014 to 2019, and there, she gave an endless number of concerts and recitals, and participated in numerous masterclasses, being heard by internationally recognized cellists such as Raphael Wallfisch, Francis Gouton, Guy Johnston, and Christoph Richter. Her chamber groups toured the entire country and were invited to play at the Shaldon Music Festival of Devon, The Stoller Hall in Manchester, and at the Rhyl Music Club in Wales. In 2017 Nina was a concerto finalist at the prestigious school of Chethams’s.
She began playing the cello at the age of 7, her first teacher being her father Alejandro Rivas. Her other professors have been Daniel Levitof, teacher at the Peobody Institute in Baltimore, Nicholas Jones, professor at Chetham’s, Vladimir Atapin, one of the famous ‘Virtuosos of Moscow’, and the great Spanish concert cellist Adolfo Gutiérrez Arenas.
Born in 2001, Cincinnati Ohio and with venezuelan citizenship. Nina has always maintained a very strong relationship with this country and her family from Mérida and San Cristobal.
Currently, Rivas plays a cello dating back to 1771, made by English Luthier Joseph Hill, and kindly loaned to her by the Royal College of Music.