American cellist Camden Shaw will join the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in Semester 1, 2027 as Senior Lecturer in Cello.

Shaw is the cellist of the two-time Grammy-nominated Dover Quartet, which BBC Music Magazine has named one of the greatest string quartets of the past 100 years.

He joins the Conservatorium from the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, where he teaches alongside his fellow Dover Quartet members.

Julian Smiles, Senior Lecturer in Cello and Discipline Lead for Strings, at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music warmly welcomed Shaw’s appointment.

“It is a dream come true for the entire Performance area at Sydney Conservatorium of Music to have Camden Shaw join us in 2027,” he said. “Camden is a wonderful cellist and educator with a strong international presence.

“Camden is no stranger to Australia, having toured for Musica Viva Australia with the Dover Quartet, and I had the very great pleasure of meeting and performing with him at that time.

Smiles said Camden’s ongoing membership with the Dover Quartet and his teaching role at Curtis will be of immense value to the Conservatorium and its students.

“In addition to being an outstanding musician and effective and engaging communicator, he’s a genuinely nice guy, and we look forward to having him on the Strings team at the Conservatorium,” Smiles said.

Shaw has been the cellist of the Dover Quartet since its formation at Curtis in 2008.

The Quartet won the gold medal and grand prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition in 2010, then took first prize and every special award at the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2013.

Shaw has since performed in more than 1,500 concerts with the Quartet in major venues around the world.

His appointment adds to the Sydney Conservatorium’s community of leading Australian and international musicians, giving students the opportunity to learn from artists whose careers extend from the rehearsal room and classroom to the world’s major concert stages.

Shaw will teach cello at the Conservatorium while continuing his performance career with the Dover Quartet and as a solo and collaborative musician.

“I’ll be taking one-on-one lessons, studio classes where we discuss anything from technique to performance psychology to physical fitness and injury prevention; and I will be working with small ensembles on the elements of music making specific to self-guided rehearsal and ensemble playing,” Shaw said.

Shaw has built a career around chamber music, collaboration and performance. He has performed with musicians including Emmanuel Ax, Marc-André Hamelin, Leif-Ove Andsnes and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, while maintaining an active solo career. His work as a cellist includes his own transcriptions and recordings, as well as performances with orchestras including the Artosphere Festival Orchestra, where he has held the principal cello position.

His teaching also reaches an online audience through Tonebase and his CelloMonk Instagram account, where he shares lessons and insights into cello technique and musical interpretation.

For Shaw, chamber music is a deeply collaborative art form, shaped by the relationships between musicians and the time they spend exploring a work together.

Shaw studied cello at Curtis, with Peter Wiley, graduating in 2010, and returning to Curtis as a faculty member in 2020. He has also studied with cellists including Norman Fischer, David Finckel and Steven Isserlis.

He performs on a cello made in 2025 by American luthier Samuel Zygmuntowicz.

“One of the things I love most about playing the cello is that there are many things to be passionate about within this one field!” Shaw said.

“For me, musically, I’m always searching for ways to sound like our internal singer is of central importance. Too often, our hands do things our ‘singer’ (our musical imagination) would not, and when we listen carefully to our singer, we always find more detail, more nuance, more beauty than we thought possible.” 

Shaw said he is also passionate about live music as storytelling.

“Music is perhaps the most ancient human art,” he said. “Although we should always aim for technical mastery, the most important thing is sharing a narrative experience with one another through sound.”

Now, after years of international touring and teaching in the United States, Shaw is bringing his cello, his experience and his curiosity about music to Sydney.

“I have been to Sydney many times in the past, sometimes with the Dover Quartet, and sometimes to visit friends,” Shaw said. “What a spectacular place! I'm beyond excited to get to call Sydney home, and to explore the continent more fully. I have had some of the best food of my life in Sydney, and the human energy here has a distinctly welcoming and open quality, which of course I love!”