Jonathan Williams ('cello) comes from a distinguished family of musicians and started the cello aged 5. Early musical training also included 5 years as a chorister at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Music he won a Gulbenkian Foundation Fellowship that enabled him to study with Pierre Fournier in Geneva.

In 1975 he was awarded a bronze medal as well as the Bach prize at the Geneva International Cello Competition. His love of playing Chamber Music made him decide to concentrate on working with small chamber groups. He became a founder member of the Esterhazy Baryton Trio who made several recordings of Haydn Trios for EMI and in 1980 he joined the Fires of London, a group who specialised in contemporary music, particularly music by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. These groups took him all over the world.

In 1988 he was asked to join the Delme String Quartet with whom he made over 20 CDs and he also became principle cellist of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields’ chamber group led by Iona Brown.

More recently he has decided to put an end to travelling the world for work and likes to work in the London studios recording for films and TV. This enables him to spend more time with his Swedish wife Kerstin, his 2 daughters and 2 grandsons, (with one more grandchild on the way). He also enjoys the great outdoors at their house in Sweden and helping his wife with her very successful Interior Design business in London. He also likes to buy 20th century art (when he can afford it) and antique glass.

Jonathan plays on a cello by Carlo Giuseppe Testore made in Milan in 1692.