Ian Coury

Having shared a stage with Brazilian choro legends Armandinho and Hamilton de Holanda by the age of 12, Ian Coury(Opens in a new window) has since been accruing professional awards and accolades and is already, at 20 years old, one of Brazil’s most-respected virtuosos of the 10-string mandolin. As he continues to push the boundaries of the instrument and of the choro genre, he has performed with such luminaries as Paquito D’Rivera, Claudio Roditi, and Toninho Horta, and in the past two years has received two important awards: “Best Instrumentalist” in the National FM Radio Festival (2020), and second place (by popular vote) in Brazil’s eFestival (2021), both for performances of original compositions.

Ian comes from Brazil’s capital city, Brasília, where he began playing mandolin at age eight, studying with Marcelo Lima at the Raphael Rabello School of Choro. In 2019 Ian received a scholarship to study at Berklee college of music in Boston, where, in his second year, he received the String Department Award, and has already taught a choro workshop at Harvard University. Before coming to the US to study, Ian had already made the journey to perform at NAMM (2017, 2018), but his professional trajectory in Brazil began much earlier; in 2014 he played both solo and with Armandinho at the Club do Choro in Brasília; 2014 and 2015, he was recognized for his merits by the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Arts, History, and Literature; in 2016 he appeared on the cover of Choro Magazine, and received a culture award from Brazil’s House of Representatives.