
Swedish cellist Lydia Hillerudh started playing the cello at the age of seven under the guidance of Elisabeth Lysell-Bjermkvist. In 2012, Lydia was awarded a scholarship to study for her Bachelor’s degree with professor Mats Lidström at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she graduated with a first class honours degree in 2016. She graduated with Distinction from her Master of Arts degree in 2017, also awarded from the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied with renowned cellist Robert Cohen. She was a Worswick scholar during her Master studies, and was also awarded the Sir John Barbirolli Prize at the Academy in 2014. She has appeared on BBC Radio 3 with contemporary chamber music ensemble ‘An Assembly’.
An eager chamber musician, Lydia is the cellist of the prize-winning Tritium Trio, of which she is a founding member, together with clarinetist Jernej Albreht and pianist Joseph Havlat. At the Academy, they won both the Harold Craxton prize and the Isaacs/Pirani Trio prize, and were selected as Park Lane Group Young Musicians in 2015. They were awarded the Audience Prize at the coveted St-Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Music Competition in 2017, and they held the prestigious post as Chamber Music Fellows at the Royal Academy of Music for the 2017/18 season.
Tritium Trio took part of Dartington International Festival and Summer School in 2018 and 2019, where they worked with Eleanor Aalberga and Harrison Birtwistle on the advanced chamber music composition course. Lydia is also a returning artist to Romsey Chamber Music Festival and has recently joined Mila Piano Trio with violinist Laura Rickard and pianist Ziteng Fan.
Lydia is a sought-after teacher, and teaches weekly at Centre for Young Musicians and St Albans Music Academy. She is a guest teacher at the music school Lilla Akademien in Stockholm. She has been involved in the development of the charity Play for Progress’s therapeutic music programme for unaccompanied refugee minors, delivering weekly tuition and larger workshops.
Lydia is also an avid arranger, having had her arrangements for cello- and string ensembles played across the UK and Scandinavia.