Classical music
Pierre Joost
Pierre Joost (1943-2002) was a violinist, choir director and conductor from the canton of Vaud, and the founder of the Orchestre Da Chiesa. Born in Moudon and originally trained as a schoolteacher, he studied at the Lausanne Conservatoire, earning his violin diploma in 1968 before training as a conductor. Director of the Dommartin mixed choir from 1963, he founded the Orchestre Da Chiesa in the spring of 1973, its first concert given at the Temple Saint-Vincent in Montreux. A music teacher at the Montreux secondary school from 1970 to 2002, he led his orchestra until his death.
Pierre Joost, founder of the Orchestre Da Chiesa
A Vaud musician
Born in Moudon in 1943, Pierre Joost obtained a teaching certificate at the École normale in Lausanne in 1963, then entered the Lausanne Conservatoire. There he studied piano with Anne-Marie Tabachnik, violin with Stéphane Romascano, whose diploma he earned in 1968, and chamber music with Árpád Gérecz. A violinist at heart, he also played in the Conservatoire orchestra, conducted by Gérecz, readily swapping the bow for the baton.
He completed conducting studies with Andor Kovách and a secondary-school music teaching certificate in 1971. From 1970, teaching became his profession: he taught music at the Montreux secondary school until 2002.
The founder of the Orchestre Da Chiesa
Director of the Dommartin mixed choir from 1963, Pierre Joost needed a small orchestra to accompany its concerts. From this grew, in the spring of 1973, the Orchestre Da Chiesa, originally made up of amateur strings and wind players, whose first concert he gave at the Temple Saint-Vincent in Montreux. Briefly enlarged with a choir of the same name, the ensemble would ultimately survive only as a string orchestra.
In 1979 Pierre Joost himself played within his orchestra, leaving the conducting to one of the violists, Étienne Roulet. He also belonged to an amateur string quartet, the Quatuor du Carroz, named after a district of Chexbres, alongside Pierre Seidel (violin), Étienne Roulet (viola) and Jean-Paul Dépraz (cello). He led the Orchestre Da Chiesa for nearly thirty years, until his sudden death in 2002; the ensemble outlived him and continues its activity on the Riviera.
Music therapist and electroacoustic pioneer
From early on, Pierre Joost took an interest in the therapeutic virtues of music. After a book published in 1971 on its benefits for children with intellectual disabilities, he worked from 1972 to 1985 as a music therapist at the Fondation Renée-Delafontaine, trained with Liliane Azinala in Paris and Lausanne, and founded the working group “Music and the intellectually disabled”.
He also explored the link between music and technology: he took electroacoustic composition courses at the Annecy research centre (1982-1986), then became, from 1987, a research fellow in the field at the Centre vaudois de recherches pédagogiques. At the Montreux secondary school he taught music and, later, electroacoustics.