Cellist Florent Renard-Payen was born in Paris to a family of professional musicians; his parents were both harpists. He studied in France with Annie Cochet and Michel Strauss and in 1988 was top prizewinner at the U.F.A.M International Cello Competition. At twenty, Renard-Payen moved to Boston to pursue five years of graduate studywith Andrés Díaz, culminating in a Master’s degree and the Pi Kappa Lambda award for musical achievement from Boston University in 1996. He completed his musical studies in 2004, earning a Doctor of Musical Arts in Cello Performance from the Eastman School of Music. During his studies in the states, Renard-Payen had the honor of performing in master classes for Pieter Wispelwey, Yo-Yo Ma, Roberto Díaz and the late Joseph Gingold. Since 1999, he has been teaching cello at Colgate University and chamber music at Hamilton College, N.Y. He has held master classes at the University of Alaska, Northwestern State University, Mansfield University, University of Central Arkansas, and University of South Florida. A champion of music of the 20th and 21st centuries, Renard-Payen is the founder of the Tarab Cello Ensemble, a group dedicated to contemporary repertoire for cello ensemble, a guest performer of the Society for New Music in Syracuse, NY. He has commissioned and premiered solo cello works by Dan Trueman, Todd Coleman, Aaron Travers, Gregory Mertl and Garrett Byrnes and has collaborated with such composers as Larry Bell, David Liptak, Lukas Foss, Brad Lubman, Augusta Read Thomas, Dan Trueman and Martin Scherzinger. Renard-Payen has recorded chamber works by David Liptak and Dan Trueman on the Bridge Records label. Renard-Payen: ‘The idea behind Bach & Beyond came from my devotion to the performance of new music. By presenting these recent works on a program juxtaposed with the Préludes of the Bach Cello Solo Suites, I wanted to create a beautiful musical introduction or interlude to set the tone for each piece. The analogy of this musical journey was perhaps inspired by my observations on many occasions at the Glass Pyramid and the historical Louvre Museum during my late night walks in Paris.’ |
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