Raymond Cousté

Described by the New York Times as a “remarkably versatile” musician, French guitarist and lutenist Raymond Cousté has appeared in over 100 countries worldwide as a soloist and member of various ensembles as well as in theatre productions. Playing mainly twentieth-century music on the guitar, he uses different lutes for the interpretation of Renaissance and Baroque repertoire. His many international appearances include two invitations to tour the People’s Republic of China, where he was named Honorary Advisor to the Guitar Societies of Shanghaï and Beijing. His performances have also included frequent radio and television broadcasts in France, Italy, the USA, Canada, Japan, China, Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Mexico and Australia, to name a few. Raymond Cousté holds an honours diploma from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. He attended the master classes of Andrès Segovia and José Tomàs in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, winning first prize in the José Ramírez International Competition there in 1973. He has been a prizewinner at a number of other international guitar competitions, including Radio France (Paris), Maria Canals (Barcelona) and the International Guitar Festival of Munich. He collaborated for many years with the highly popular early music ensemble Ars Antiqua de Paris with whom he made several recordings. He also performs in the McClelland-Cousté Duo, one of the longest standing guitar duos on the international scene. This husband and wife team has toured across North and South America, Europe and mainland China, released numerous CDs and recorded live-in-concert radio broadcasts for CBC Radio Canada and Chinese State Radio. "Clearly a master lutenist, Raymond Cousté played with a clean, transparent style, effortless in its simplicity and elegant in its tonal imaging" HALIFAX CHRONICLE HERALD, Canada "An admirable concert...Polished phrasing, clear voicing and crisply delineated rhythms helped to make it in many ways an object lesson in how to present a guitar recital" CLASSICAL GUITAR MAGAZINE (Cover Story) Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.