Hailed as “sensational” and for playing with “total commitment and conviction” (Seen & Heard International 2024), cellist Rainer Crosett is quickly building an international career as an artist of uncommon sensitivity and creativity. From his Wigmore Hall recital debut in 2019 as the first American cellist ever to win the Pierre Fournier Award, to his Spring 2023 concerto debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, he regularly appears as a soloist and chamber musician on many of the most renowned stages throughout Europe and North America. Praised as an artist of “assurance, substance, and conviction” by Ralph Kirshbaum, Rainer’s passion for the many ways music relates to other fields continues to yield boundary-breaking interdisciplinary projects and programs.

Rainer is the co-founder of a new interdisciplinary performance collective in Berlin, Tonhain Kollektiv, which will debut in April 2024. A highlight of his previous season was leading a multidisciplinary exploration of the relationship between poetic language & forms and instrumental music with Harvard Professor of Anthropology Nicholas Harkness, which culminated in a Yellow Barn Artist Residency and a performance and presentation at Harvard University. This endeavor builds on Rainer’s work as co-founder of Project LENS, which started at Harvard in 2015 and featured collaborations with leading thinkers and artists of our time, such as Steven Pinker, the Parker Quartet, and Samuel Bak.

Rainer particularly enjoys working with composers of our time, and has collaborated closely with Jörg Widmann, Sir James MacMillan, Reena Esmail, Lei Liang, and most recently, Dániel Péter Biró, on a multi-year exploration of his Spinoza-inspired work “Ethica” in Stavanger, Norway.

Rainer is frequently in demand as a chamber musician, and has performed at festivals such as Ravinia Steans Music Institute, Music@Menlo, Roman River Festival, Yellow Barn, Romsey Chamber Music Festival, HearAndNow Festival Amsterdam, Eggenfelden klassisch, Miesbach Kammermusikfestival, the Piatigorsky International Cello Festival, IMS Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music, the Trondheim Chamber Music Festival, and La Jolla SummerFest. He has also collaborated in performance with artists such as Robert Levin, the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Thomas Riebl, Laurence Lesser, Cho-Liang Lin, Anthony Marwood, Donald and Vivian Weilerstein, and Kim Kashkashian.

Rainer was the recipient of the Silver Medal and the Artistic Encouragement Award at the 2017 Ima Hogg Competition in Houston, TX, resulting in a concerto debut with the Houston Symphony. And in 2015, Rainer made his concerto debut at Boston’s Jordan Hall with the NEC Philharmonia under Hugh Wolff. Rainer has also won the 2018 Performing Arts Competition of the Fine Arts Club of Pasadena and a Presser Graduate Award from the University of Southern California.

He began his studies in the Harvard-New England Conservatory Joint Program, through which he received his M.M. from New England Conservatory and his A.B. magna cum laude in Philosophy from Harvard, where he was one of only 24 students to be elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior and was named a John Harvard Scholar. Also during his time at Harvard, he was the recipient of the Lucy Allen Paton Prize for excellence in the humanities and fine arts, the Thomas T. Hoopes Prize for outstanding achievement on his senior thesis, “Human Rights and the Limits of Neutrality,” and an Artist Development Fellowship.

Rainer went on to receive an Artist Diploma at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and he is currently completing further graduate studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin. His study in Germany was generously supported by a Frank Huntington Beebe Fund Grant.

He has taken lessons and masterclasses from notable cellists such as David Geringas, Frans Helmerson, Steven Isserlis, Yo-Yo Ma, Laurence Lesser, Bernard Greenhouse, and Gary Hoffman. His principal teachers and mentors have included Jens Peter Maintz, Ralph Kirshbaum, Paul Katz, Mark Churchill, Robert Levin, Benjamin Zander, and Emmanuel Feldman. He also received a scholarship from the International Academy of Music in Liechtenstein and participated in the intensive music weeks and activities offered by the Academy.

Rainer is a passionate advocate of classical music as a force for social change and he is particularly involved in activism for human rights in North Korea. He has worked for Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul and has given several fundraising concerts in both the U.S. and South Korea, helping to raise significant funds for various North Korean human rights-oriented projects.