Christophe Coin

Christophe Coin (born January 26, 1958 in Caen, France) is a French cellist, viola da gamba player and conductor active in the field of historically informed performance. He is the cellist of the Quatuor Mosaïques and is the director of the Ensemble Baroque de Limoges. Coin studied with Jacques Ripoche. At the Conservatoire de Paris, he studied cello with André Navarra and graduated in 1974. From 1976, he studied on a scholarship in Vienna. He was influenced by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, among others. From 1978, he studied viola da gamba with Jordi Savall at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. He worked first mainly as a soloist. In 1984, he founded the Mosaïques Ensemble and in 1987 the string quartet Quatuor Mosaïques with Erich Höbarth, Andrea Bischof and Anita Mitterer, all players members of the Concentus Musicus Wien. The quartet has performed mostly works of the classical period on period instruments, with a focus on less known works. Since 1988, Coin has been a teacher for Baroque cello and viola da gamba at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris and at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. He has organised workshops on the building and playing of historic instruments. After a 2012 concert in New York, their playing was reviewed as "balancing period instruments and historically informed performance practice with contemporary interpretive impulses like no other". Since 1991, Coin has been director of the Ensemble Baroque de Limoges, for performances of cantatas, oratorio and operas of the 17th and 18th century on period instruments. For more than fifteen years now (2001) Christophe Coin’s career has been truly international. He is recognized as being one of the most reliable and most nature French artists of the present day. This is partly due to his training after being awarded a First Prize for Cello at the Paris Conservatoire in 1974, while attending André Navarra’s class. He continued perfecting his abilities by being the pupil and disciple of Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Vienna Akademie für Musik and of Jordi Savall for the viola da gamba at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. As a soloist Christophe Coin plays regularly with the greatest conductors and most prestigious ensembles, including Concentus Musicus Wien (Nikolaus Harnoncourt), Hespérion XX (Jordi Savall) and the Academy of Ancient Music (Christopher Hogwood). In 1984 he founded and leads Mosaïques Ensemble and, above all, the Quartet of the same name. They play principally Mozart and Haydn, but also Beethoven and Schubert. Christophe Coin is also in charge of courses in Baroque Cello and Viola de Gamba at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris and at the Schola Cantorum in Basle. He also guests as conductor. Christophe Coin is now one of those rare personalities who have made the music scene of the 1990’s what it is today. He is regarded as an exceptional musician: many of the records the Mosaïques Quartet have devoted to the late 18th-century Viennese music have won the highest distinctions and are considered to be among the finest recordings. His mini series of 3 CD’s dedicated to Bach Cantatas with violoncello piccolo were also widely acclaimed by the critics. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.