Emma Ferrand

Emma Ferrand was a British cellist and pedagogue who taught at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester for 42 years and performed widely as a soloist and chamber musician. She died on 26 October 2026 at the age of 78.

Born in London on 1 October 1948, Ferrand began the cello at twelve and trained at London's International Cello School. She studied with Douglas Cameron at the Royal Academy of Music and, from 1967, worked as a postgraduate with Pierre Fournier. In 1974 she received an award from the National Federation of Music Societies and took part in a televised masterclass with Paul Tortelier, early markers of a career that would balance concert work with teaching.

She was a founder member of the Camden Chamber Orchestra, which became the Orchestra of St John's Smith Square (now Orchestra of St John's), with which she toured and recorded extensively. In the 1970s she gave several solo recitals at Wigmore Hall. With her husband, violinist Richard Deakin, and pianist Catherine Dubois she formed the Deakin Piano Trio, which toured regularly and recorded for Meridian Records, placing her firmly inside Britain's postwar chamber music circuit.

Ferrand joined the RNCM staff in September 1976 and remained until July 2018. She was made a Fellow of the RNCM in 2008. In the 1980s and 1990s she assisted her close friend Ralph Kirshbaum at the Manchester International Cello Festival and at the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove in Cornwall. In the mid 1990s she took part in an academic exchange with the Eastman School of Music in New York and sat on juries for competitions in South Africa, Germany and Croatia. In the 2000s she recorded two volumes of the Bach Cello Suites at Rydal Church in the Lake District, citing the building's natural acoustic, and the album Northern Lights, of works by Manchester based composers, with pianist Jeremy Young.

News of her death was published by The Strad on 5 November 2026. No cause of death was made public. She is remembered as a performer whose long teaching career at the RNCM shaped several generations of cellists, and whose chamber and solo work linked London training to Manchester's conservatoire life.