Céline Papion is a curious and versatile artist: cellist, performer, concert designer, and artistic director. She moves fluidly between early and contemporary music, music theatre, and free improvisation. Her work and commitment to 20th- and 21st-century music were recognized in 2019 with the Internationale Bodensee-Konferenz Prize in the category of contemporary music performance.
Céline trained in France with renowned cellists and teachers such as Raphaële Sémésiz, Hélène Dautry, Ophélie Gaillard, and Philippe Müller. She then continued her studies in Germany, where she further developed her artistic practice with Francis Gouton and Jean-Guihen Queyras. During her studies, she was a scholarship holder of the Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Foundation. She subsequently received additional grants, including the INITIAL grant from the Akademie der Künste Berlin with composer Yiran Zhao (2021–22), a Goethe-Institut grant (2022), and a grant from the Deutscher Musikrat (2023).
She initiates, designs, performs, and directs her own projects, with a strong inclination toward experimental and interdisciplinary formats, including the PUSS Festival (2017), OTTO (2018–19), and Sonic Ocean (2022).
Ongoing exchanges with contemporary composers and artists also play an important role in her work. Céline collaborates closely with composers such as I-lly Cheng, Oliver S. Frick, Toshio Hosokawa, Steffen Krebber, Joseph Michaels, and Yiran Zhao. She is a member of the lovemusic collective, Reactive Ensemble, Ensemble il capriccio, and Stiftsbarock Stuttgart. She serves on the board of the Stuttgart Collective for Contemporary Music (Stuttgarter Kollektiv für aktuelle Musik) and is co-director of the free improvisation ensemble Open_Music.
Céline has been invited to perform at international venues and festivals, including Musik der Jahrhunderte Stuttgart, Theater Junges Ensemble Stuttgart, Theater Rampe Stuttgart, Musiktheaterformen at Gare du Nord Basel, Sinuston Festival Magdeburg, EinTanzHaus Mannheim, Opéra National du Rhin, Cité de la voix in Vézelay, the Music Series at NUI Maynooth and UCC Cork (Ireland), and the Música Hoje Biennale for New Music in Curitiba (Brazil). She has been an artist in residence at the Borneo Laboratory (Malaysia, 2017), Theater Rampe Stuttgart (2020–21), and Treasure Hill Artist Village in Taipei (Taiwan, 2022 & 2024).
