Meet our musicians:
Nicola Paoli

Which instrument do you play at the Cologne Academy and when did you start playing?
I play cello, I did my first project with this orchestra in April 2022. I started playing cello at the age of 6, in 1994.

What brought you to the Kölner Akademie?
I actually met Michael for the first time in an orchestra in France, during my studies of historically informed classical and romantic repertoire there. And I was later recommended by someone, when he was looking for new players for some incoming projects.

In which other orchestras and ensembles do you play?
I play in Abchordis Ensemble, my baroque group that I co-founded more than 10 years ago, and I freelance in various other orchestras specialized from baroque to romantic music on period instruments: La Cetra Barockorchester Basel, Orchestre des Champs Elysées, Accademia Barocca Lucernensis, Le Concert Spirituel. I also love playing chamber music in smaller ensembles.

What do you think distinguishes your work with the Kölner Akademie?
Working with Kölner Akademie often involves rediscovering unknown or less-known beautiful ancient music. Besides the fascinating process of unearthing forgotten pieces, this also means that we are untethered from the standards formed by other people and we can bring our personal view, experience, knowledge and research in what we do. Of course, this brings freshness to the whole process of making music, and has interesting repercussions when we are dealing with more well-known repertoire too. From the very beginning H.I.P. work has had the characteristic of wanting to break away from tradition. Now that new traditions have formed even in the H.I.P. world, I find it genuine and special to work on a language of one’s own and shaping music without the looming shadows of others. 

What do you like to do when you are not playing music?
When not playing music I shoot videos, which is my other passion -and job- other than the music, working alone or for other film companies. When not working, I cook nice food for my friends (and myself!), sometimes experimenting with new and elaborated recipes, or, simply I enjoy jogging in a beautiful park nearby during the warm season or playing videogames (mainly COD at the moment) with some friends.