Peter Kooy

Kooij started his musical career at 6 years as a choir boy. However he started his musical studies as a violin student. He came back to singing, with tuition from Max van Egmond at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam which led in 1980 to the award of the diploma for solo performance.[1]

His international career started in 1981 under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe, with La Chapelle Royale and the Collegium Vocale Gent, with whom he interpreted mainly Johann Sebastian Bach,[2] and also performed Henri Dumont, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Heinrich Schütz and Jean Gilles.[3] From the mid-1990s much of his career was dedicated to the recording of Bach's complete cantatas with the Bach Collegium Japan, directed by Masaaki Suzuki.

In 2002 he founded together with Monika Frimmer, Christa Bonhoff and Dantes Diwiak a quartet Tanto Canto to sing rarely performed music a cappella, with piano or with ensemble. The quartet recorded in 2005 excerpts from the collections Augsburger Tafel-Confect (short for: Ohren-vergnügendes und Gemüth-ergötzendes Tafel-Confect, in English: Augsburg Table Confectionery, Pleasuring the Ears and Delightful to the Soul) of the composers Valentin Rathgeber and Johann Caspar Seyfert.[4][5]

Kooij has been teaching singing at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague since September 2005.