Kate Gould gained an entrance scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in 1990 and went on to study in Berlin at the Hochschule der Künste. During this time she was selected for the BBC Young Artists Forum and Tillett Trust schemes and became a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra.
At the Academy she also formed the Leopold String Trio which went on to sustain a distinguished international career until their swan song in 2012 at London’s Barbican Centre - Tippett’s Triple Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. After their hugely successful debut recordings of the complete Beethoven String Trios for Hyperion Records they soon became BBC New Generations Artists and ECHO Rising Stars, as well as gaining a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. Kate curated a prestigious 3-year series of twelve concerts at Wigmore Hall, inviting regular collaborative artists including pianists, Paul Lewis and Marc Andre Hamelin, and the trio went on to win the 2005 Royal Philharmonic Society’s Chamber Music Award.
Meanwhile, Kate also became a member of the London Bridge Trio (formerly London Bridge Ensemble), founded by its pianist, Daniel Tong. They were joined by violinist, David Adams, in 2016 and continue to enjoy a particularly strong reputation in the recording field. Thought-provoking pre-concert talks and lecture-recitals are something the trio is also increasingly known for, and their collaboration with Richard Wigmore continues, exploring together the influences, connections and history of masterworks for the genre.
In 2019 and 2020 the London Bridge Trio released Volumes 1 and 2 of ‘The Leipzig Circle’, celebrating unheard female composers from the 1800 by recording the complete trios of Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn and Robert and Clara Schumann (SOMM Recordings). The discs have so far garnered high praise: The Telegraph called Volume 1 “a total delight… The performers do the works proud.” Gramophone Magazine and BBC Music Magazine joined in with: “Everything here is played with sensitivity and conviction” (Gramophone); “The London Bridge Trio offer a fascinating glimpse into Leipzig… their works inhabit distinctive, highly Romantic soundworlds full of invention and drama” (BBC Music Magazine).
Back in Autumn 2015 the trio had released a disc of Dvorak Piano Quartets on the Champs Hill label, with guest violist Gary Pomeroy of the Heath Quartet. This album also received rave reviews in Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine (double five stars) and the Observer.
In 2008 the ensemble founded its own festival, the Winchester Chamber Music Festival, in Kate’s hometown. The festival welcomes capacity audiences each year in late April/early May and the trio have secured their reputation for stylish programmes involving exceptional international artists including the Heath and Castalian Quartets, Esther Hoppe, Krzysztof Chorzelski, Sara Bitlloch and the Gould Piano Trio.
In 2018 the festival celebrated its tenth anniversary with the world premiere of a new work written for the trio by Colin Matthews: ‘Hidden Agenda’, which the trio was due to perform at Wigmore Hall in March 2020 before it was cancelled due to the pandemic. Kate recently became the festival’s sole artistic director but the London Bridge Trio continues to be central to the programming.
She also co-directs the Ironstone Chamber Music Festival in north Oxfordshire alongside her sister, violinist Lucy Gould. Kate recently performed at the Aldeburgh and Sacconi Folkstone festivals and regularly appears at chamber music festivals in Peasmarsh, Penarth, Corbridge, Wye Valley and the Festival de los Siete Lagos, Argentina. In 2019 she performed with Jack Liebeck at the Laeszhalle, Hamburg, and in Cologne for an Offenbach theatre project on gut strings. Her recent performance for Martin Randall of two Beethoven Cello Sonatas at the Castle Hotel, Taunton, will be repeated in 2021 at Queens College, Dublin.
Kate is proud to have been a member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe since 2000 and is often invited as guest principal cellist to a wide variety of orchestras including Northern Sinfonia, ECO, SCO, RPO, BBCSSO, BBCNOW and Les Siecles in Paris (on gut strings). Kate has been a professor of cello at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and coached last year on the ‘Cadenza’ summer course. This summer she had hoped to coach on a chamber music course in Bergamo, Italy, as well as the Welsh National Youth Orchestra summer course but will resume in 2021.