David Coffin


David Coffin is a folk musician specializing in early music and sea music, based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in the United States. He is the song leader for the Revels music programs in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the director of the Narration Program for Boston Harbor Cruises. He also presents music enrichment programs for schools throughout New England. One program is based on the history of the recorder, and the other is called Life at Sea: A Voyage in Song.
Coffin has a bass-baritone voice and plays various types of recorders and whistles, in addition to archaic instruments like the shawm, rackett, or gemshorn. He comes from a musical background: his father, Reverend 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.
Coffin has also completed the digital archiving of over 330 of his father's sermons from the Riverside Church in New York City to a dedicated website:
Coffin works at Save the Harbor / Save the Bay since 2000. He leads the All Access Boston Harbor youth program, which brings kids from all over Massachusetts to go to George's Island or Spectacle Island.
He played the role of the singing fisherman in the 2020 drama Blow the Man Down.

Discography

In addition to contributing to a variety of collaborative CDs for Revels Records and North Star Records, Coffin has also recorded four solo albums: Flight of Time, Nantucket Sleighride, Safe in the Harbour, and Last Trip Home which he recorded with his daughter Linnea. All feature traditional and maritime music, some of which is taken from the singing of Ewan MacColl and Stan Rogers.