David Coffin is an American traditional folk musician based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, who specializes in early and maritime music. He serves as the song leader for the Cambridge-based Revels music programs and presents educational music enrichment programs for schools throughout New England, including a recorder history program and Life at Sea: A Voyage in Song. Coffin has a bass-baritone voice and plays concertinas, recorders, whistles, and historical woodwind instruments such as the shawm, rackett, and gemshorn. Born into a prominent musical family, he is the son of Reverend William Sloane Coffin—who studied piano under Nadia Boulanger—the grandson of the legendary concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein, and the great-grandson of Polish conductor Emil Młynarski. His lineage also traces back to Tristram Coffin, a prominent 1600s whaling pioneer who bought Nantucket Island in 1659. Coffin's solo discography consists of four albums: Flight of Time, Nantucket Sleighride, Safe in the Harbour, and Last Trip Home, which he recorded with his daughter Linnea. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he recorded three digital albums: a virtual hymn sing, a live broadcast maritime concert, and The Sound of Time, a collection of TikTok requests recorded in single, unedited takes. Onscreen, Coffin led several sea shanties in the 2019 film Blow the Man Down, and he was subsequently credited on four songs on the movie's 2020 soundtrack album. Additionally, his 2010 YouTube performance of “Roll the Old Chariot” at the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival garnered over six million views by late 2025.
