Umberto Clerici was born in Turin in 1981 and he began the study of cello when he was five at the Suzuki School of Turin, then he continued his studies at the Turin’s Conservatory with Antonio Mosca.

He attended the courses of Mario Brunello at the “Romano Romanini Foundation” in Brescia, and of David Gèringas in Fiesole. In 2007 he took the Soloist diplom at the Augsburg and Nurnberg University (Germany)  with Julius Berger.

Already Prize winner in many international competition (including the Janigro Competiton in Zagreb and the Rostropovich Competition in Paris), in particular he is Laureate at the famous Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 2011 (the only Italian cellist together with Mario Brunello that received a Prize in 50 years).

In April of 1999 he made his debut as soloist playing Haydn’s D Major cello concerto in Japan. Afterwards he performed with many orchestras including the San Petersburg Philarmonic Academic Orchestra, State Symphony orchestra of Russia in Moscow, Philarmonia Wien, “I Pomeriggi Musicali” in Milan, Orchestra of Rome, Brighton Philarmonic, Zagreb Soloist, Orchestra da Camera di Mantova, “Haydn” Orchester of Trento and Bozen, Symphony Orchestras of Istanbul and Ankara and the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra collaborating with conductors like Alexander

Dmitriev, Keri-Lynn Wilson, Lu Jia, Dimitri Sitkovetzki, Jean Bernard Pommier, Barry Wordsworth, Ola Rudner and Lukas-Peter Graf.

He had been for 4 years the soloist in residence of Turin Philharmonic.

He recorded a CD of the Saint-Saens cello concerto n°1 for RS label and in 2006 a new cd has been released together with “Amadeus”, the most important italian magazine for classical music, with all the compositions for cello and orchestra by Tchaikovsky and the First concerto by Shostakovich.

He performed in some of the most important concert halls such as the Weill Recital Hall at  Carnegie Hall in New York, the Big Hall of the Musik Verein in Wien and the "Auditorium Parco della Musica" in Rome. In 2003 he made his debut at the Salzburg Festival.

He received many Awards: between them, in July of 2003 he received in Florence a prestigious prize called “Galileo 2000” together with the famous Italian violinist Uto Ughi and the Nobel prize-winner for Peace Simon Peres, the Mozarteum prize in Salzburg, the "Pressenda Award" 2005 for the best young soloist of the year and the Scanno Prize 2007.

He is the Principal Solo Cellist at the Teatro Regio in Turin and he collaborates as principal solo cellist at the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala in Milan.

During the year he teaches at the Academy of Music in Pinerolo and in the summer he teaches together with Julius Berger at the Salzburg Mozarteum. He gave masterclasses: at the CIM, Cleveland Institute of Music (U.s.a.), Augsburg Hochschule (Germany), Istanbul Conservatory and Ankara University.

Beginning in his early youth, he has partipated in several chamber music groups with a number of famous musicians including Itamar Golan, Pavel Vernikov, Enrico Pace, Anthony Pay, Sergej Krilov, Massimo Quarta, Marco Rizzi, Mario Brunello, Enrico Dindo, String quartet of La Scala Theatre and composers like Sofia Gubaidulina and Viktor Suslin.

Since April of 2001 he plays with the “Trio di Torino”.

He plays a Giovan Battista Guadagnini cello (Turin 1769) that belonged to the famous Italian cellist Antonio Janigro.

July 2011