Portuguese born, Sofia Diniz studied music and cello in Lisbon and later specialized in historical performance practice in Cologne, Germany with Rainer Zipperling (baroque cello and viola da gamba), in Den Haag, Netherlands with Wieland Kuijken and Philippe Pierlot (viola da gamba) and Brussels, Belgium with Philippe Pierlot. Sofia Diniz hat scholarships from Centro Nacional de Cultura
(Lisbon) and the Nuffic-Huygens Program (Netherlands).
She works as a freelance gamba player throughout Europe and beyond, playing as a soloist and with several early music ensembles and orchestras such as The Spirit of Gambo (Freek Bortslap), Il Fondamento (Paul Dombrecht), Ricercar Consort (Philippe Pierlot), Collegium Vocale Gent (Philippe Herreweghe), Hespèrion XXI (Jordi Savall), Concerto Campestre (Pedro Castro), Ludovice Ensemble (Fernando Miguel Jalôto), Sete Lágrimas (Filipe Faria e Sérgio Peixoto) or Concerto Köln.
Sofia Diniz also has her own chamber music group, Ensemble ConTrastes, which dedicates to the performance of music from the baroque period written for or with viola da gamba.
Sofia Diniz has played in numerous recordings with Sete Lágrimas for the label MU, for MIRARE with Ricercar Consort (Philippe Pierlot), for AliaVox with Hespèrion XXI (Jordi Savall), for Harmonia Mundi with Collegium Vocale Gent and Concerto
Palatino (Philippe Herreweghe), and some live recordings, like of Purcells Dido and Aeneas for ARTE with Ricercar Consort and Collegium Vocale Gent (Philippe Pierlot).
Sofia Diniz is based in Cologne, Germany, and she plays a seven string viol by François Bodart (2007), copy of a Barak Norman model (London 1700), a seven string copy of a Collichon (Paris ca. 1680) by Henner Harders (2001), a treble viol by François Danger (2000) and a reble viol by Michael Pilger (2016).
2018 Sofia Diniz publishes her first solo recording La Lyre d’Apollon, the first integral recording of Jacques Morel’s first book of Suites for viola da gamba (1709) with the German label Conditura Records. Sofia Diniz collaborated with Edition Güntersberg (Günter and Leonora von Zadow) for the publishing of the modern edition of Jacques Morel’s four Suites for Viola da Gamba, already available to the public.
