Biography

Marie Cantagrill is a French violinist with a distinctive musical voice. The Strad magazine dubbed her a “magician of the violin” and “high-flying virtuoso” with a “voluptuous, enchanting sound that takes your breath away.” Her extraordinary musicianship first won awards at the Vieuxtemps and Pierre Lantier competitions, including the prestigious contemporary Claude Langevin prize.

Since then, Cantagrill has divided her time between performing concerts throughout Europe and Asia, recording a total of eight albums, and participating in charitable endeavors. Cantagrill’s albums include her critically acclaimed recordings of the Bach works for solo violin as well as Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Fantasy on Russian Themes, the latter recorded with the Budapest Concert Orchestra conducted by Tàmàs Gal at Radio Hungary Studios in Budapest.

A virtuoso with exceptional sensitivity, Cantagrill performs in a manner described by Classica Répertoire as “fiery, moving, and with a luminous sound.” Paris Match proclaimed her an “astonishing” artist “who knows how to make her violin vibrate as much as our soul.” The Strad compared her to Itzhak Perlmann and Isaac Stern. According to Der Zürcher Oberländer, “What Marie drew from her violin was simply sensational…One would have thought that this devilish violinist was the reincarnation of Paganini.” On RTL’s Classic Classique national radio program, Alain Duault admired her “extraordinary sound equality, a way of making her violin sing, speak, and tell stories.”

After taking a two-year professional break to recover from health issues, Cantagrill released a solo violin album of Bach’s Partitas Nos. 2 and 3 as the first part of her series of albums Complete Works for Solo Violin by Bach. That was followed by the 2nd part (Sonata No. 1 and Partita No. 1) and the 3rd and final part (Sonatas Nos. 2 and 3), both released in February 2015. On this series, The Strad declared that “even the most enlightened performers do not always succeed in completely ‘shaking off’ the remnants of the virtuoso tradition of the 19th century, in these pieces that represent an infinite challenge. Enter Marie Cantagrill, a former laureate of the Vieuxtemps competition, who plays with a captivating freshness and ease that are the opposite of the ‘chiseled bows’ school.” In The Confederation Musicale de France magazine, Jean Malraye lauds the series as well: “Let us be thankful for [Cantagrill’s] raising Bach to his true level as a musician-poet and for conveying through his work the breath of the rarest of artistic emotions.” Other recordings include two violin-piano albums featuring virtuoso and romantic repertoire (Marie Cantagrill  Romantique et Virtuose and Récital Slave ).

In 2011, Cantagrill founded the Chamber Orchestra of Ariège (OCA) and has performed continuously with it, including multiple national tours. She continues to serve as the Artistic Director of the OCA. More recently in 2019, Cantagrill also founded Les Grands Rendez-vous annual festival, where she regularly invites and performs with renowned international artists.

As much a contemporary artist as she is a master of the classics, Cantagrill regularly appears in concerts and artist residencies to perform modern works by composers who have written especially for her. Notable premiers include new works by Nimrod Borenstein, Louis Babin, Xavier Armenter, Omar Yagoubi, Vincent Kennedy, Charly Mandon, Jean-Cristophe Rosaz, and Naji Hakim.

Cantagrill regularly participates in charitable causes such as Restos du Cœur, Autism 09 Association, Caritas Fight Against Illiteracy, the League Against Cancer, and since 2013 she has served as the face of the Y’Arrivarem Association, which supports people with disabilities. As a believer in the positive impact classical music can have on individuals and communities, she organizes multiple events through the OCA to bring public rehearsals, educational rehearsals, and concerts to rural communities, schools, care centers for people living with disabilities, and other audiences who have not always had access to classical music culture. Paris Match has acknowledged her musical prowess paired with her community involvement as “immense talent and unparalleled generosity!”

To support the upcoming generation of young violinists, she created the Marie Cantagrill International Violin Competition in 2013 to encourage emerging young musical talent from around the world. The twelfth annual competition took place in early July 2024. In addition, Cantagrill launched her own academy of music to offer master classes to promising young musicians in the countryside of Ariège.

After studying violin in France and achieving First Prize in Violin and Chamber Music at the Conservatories of Grenoble and Boulogne-Billancourt, Marie Cantagrill continued her training at the Royal Conservatory of Liège in Belgium, where she earned an Advanced Diploma in Violin with great distinction. She also studied under Zoria Chickmoursaeva (Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow), Igor Oistrakh (Royal Conservatory of Brussels), Zakhar Bron, and Ivry Gitlis.

For the last 10 years, she has been living in Taurignan-Vieux, a village in Ariège, where her family has resided for many generations.