David Coffin

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David Coffin is a folk musician specializing in early music and sea music, based in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He is the song leader for the Cambridge Revels music programs and is the director of an organization that conducts musical tours of Boston Harbor. He also puts on musically oriented shows for local elementary schools about Renaissance music and life at sea.

Coffin is possessed of a rich bass-baritone voice and plays various types of recorders and whistles, in addition to archaic instruments like the shawm, racket or ghemshorn. A very personable performer, his real talent is in getting his whole audience singing along. Coffin also comes from a musical background: His father, Rev. William Sloane Coffin, studied to be a concert pianist with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, his grandfather was pianist Arthur Rubinstein, and his great-grandfather was Polish conductor Emil Mlynarski.

[edit] Discography

In addition to contributing to a variety of collaborative CDs for Revels Records and North Star Records, local New England recording labels, Coffin has also recorded three solo albums: Flight of Time, Nantucket Sleighride and Safe in the Harbour, all of which feature traditional and maritime music, some of which is taken from the singing of Ewan MacColl and Stan Rogers.