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The French cellist, viol player and musical director, Bruno Cocset, graduated from the Conservatoire National de Région de Tours (CNR Tours): the Cello the class of Didier Aubert (Gold Medal in 1979), Music Room (Diploma graduation in 1979) and Music Theory (Gold Medal 1978). In 1980, he was acepted to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Lyon (CNSM Lyon), where he was the student of Alain Meunier, then Jean Deplace, the class of whose he left in March 1983 due to differences in style. After these studies, he began to play the Baroque cello with its gut strings, first of all teaching himself, then working with Christophe Coin. He was the first graduate from Christophe Coin's class at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse de Paris (CNSMDP Paris) in 1986 (1st Prize unanimously). He also attended master-classes under the cellist Anner Bylsma and the violinist Jaap Schröder.
After this, Bruno Cocset spent twenty years (1985-2005) as a ‘nomadic cellist’, a period rich in musical encounters and experiences with the most ardent champions of the Baroque scene: Les Arts Florissants (Director: William Christie), Set Mosaïques (Director: Christophe Coin), Fitzwilliam, Ensemble Baroque de Limoges (Director: Christophe Coin), Le Concert Français (Director: Pierre Hantaï), La Petite Bande (Director: Sigiswald Kuijken), Les Musiciens du Louvre (Director: Marc Minkowski), Les Talens Lyriques (Director: Christophe Rousset), Arsys Bourgogne (Director: Pierre Cao), Ricercar Consort (Director: Philippe Pierlot), l’Arpeggiata (Director: Christina Pluhar), Stradivaria, l'Amoroso, Al Ayre Espanol, Henri Ledroit, Véronique Gens, Emma Kirkby, Maurice Bourgue, Frans Brüggen (J.S. Bach concerts), Gustav Leonhardt (J.S. Bach concerts), Jos van Immerseel (participating in recording the complete symphonies of Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn), Jean-Claude Malgoire, Philippe Herreweghe… His most frequent home bases in those days were Il Seminario Musicale (Director: Gérard Lesne); 1988-2004) and Le Concert des Nations and Hespèrion XX/XXI (Director of both: Jordi Savall; 1990-2005). In 1996 he founded Les Basses Réunies and recorded the cello sonatas of Antonio Vivaldi (winner of the Premio Vivaldi of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini), the first release in an abundant discography on the Alpha label.
An insatiable musician-researcher, atypical cellist, renowned teacher and founder of Les Basses Réunies, Bruno Cocset gives the Baroque cello its own individual voice, nourished by a constant quest for the perfect synergy of the instrumental and musical gesture. This work on sonority and organology carried out in tandem with the luthier and instrument maker Charles Riché has given birth to nine instruments, imagined, conceived and played for different concert and recording programmes. He has released 26 CD's, made several world tours, and won numerous prizes in music competitions.
Bruno Cocset is regularly invited to play in France and the rest of Europe, in Québec and in Russia, and also devotes much of his time to transmission: he has taught at Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse de Paris since 2001 and the Haute École de Musique in Geneva since September 2005, and from 2002 to 2013 he also taught at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya in Barcelona, where he created the historical cello class. He has since 1988 given numerous master classes at the Foundation Royaumont Conservatories in Bayonne, Caen, Strasbourg and Vannes (France), San Felliu de Guixols (Girona, Spain), St. Petersburg (Russia), Prague (Czech Republic), Bucharest and Cluj (Romania).
In 2011 Bruno Cocset e founded the Vannes Early Music Institute (Brittany), which comprises notably a European academy of early music, an instrument-making workshop and a resource centre devoted to repertories from the Renaissance to the 18th century. He currenty lives in Baden, Bretagne, France. |
