Damien Quintard

In 2019, DAU, a project quoted to be “the most insane shoot of all time” by the Telegraph and “the most expansive, complicated, all-consuming film project ever attempted” by GQ opened its world premiere in Paris. In an overwhelming sense of scale and history, the film director Ilya Khrzhanovsky and musical producer Vangelino Currentzis along with Damien Quintard joined their minds to create an experience blending live performances and complex sound processing during 30 days and nights. The general idea was to gather an incredible database of music, adaptations, experiments and emotions throughout the whole event.

Quintard was born in Paris. Inspired by his multicultural childhood spent across the globe in Mumbai, Hong Kong and Singapour, Quintard started to learn music theory and piano at the age of 3. He pursued his musical education in different conservatories and local music schools, where he developed considerable vocal skills as well as an expertise in guitar, bass, and drums. He returned to Paris in his teenager years and started a rock band, Dot Legacy, that successfully toured around Europe, Brazil and Canada winning the Best International Emerging Artist award at the Canadian Indie Week in December 2018. Fascinated by science, specifically maths and physics, he studied aerospace engineering before turning to audio engineering.

Captivated with the idea of breaking sonic barriers and finding new ways of mixing and producing, he founded The Mono Company in 2018. The Mono Company's main focus is to deliver reference recordings and the development of new state of the art audio-technology supported by its unique partnerships with Audio Note ( world's finest home audio equipment) and Aston Microphones.

In 2018, he co-produced with Les Films Jack Fébus as Lead Sound Engineer the broadcasting of the Sónar Festival in Barcelona, Spain where he recorded acts such as LCD Sound System, Laurent Garnier, Thom Yorke, Richie Hawtin and Gorillaz. During this year, he also recorded the Reworks Festival in Thessaloniki, Greece.

These recordings successfully won several awards, counting the Diapason d'Or (2017) and the Gramophone Classical Music Award (2018) for Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 as well as the BBC Magazine Music Award (2017) for Mozart's Don Giovanni – amongst many others.

After meeting with Peter Qvortrup, CEO of Audio Note in 2016 in Zurich during the premiere of Verdi's Macbeth, they decided to work together on creating a revolutionary line of audio equipment. Qvortrup’s unique vision and knowledge of music was one of the most defining moments of Damien’s early career. Quintard and Qvortrup started developing these new technologies on Audio Note Music recordings with artists such as Vincent Bélanger and Edna Stern. At this date, Damien’s studio in Paris where he edits, mixes and masters all of his records is exclusively equipped with two Audio Note systems including Tomei AN-E Alnico Sogon and Meishu AN-E SPeHE.

In 2015, he worked with Dimitris Papaioannou and Vangelino Currentzis on the production of the Baku Olympic Games Opening Ceremony in Azerbaijan. The ceremony was nominated by the National Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences for an Emmy Award, granting the Sound Engineering and Production Department a golden statuette for Outstanding Live and Direct to Tape Sound Mixing. This particular production focused on the unusual blending of different genres going from Lady Gaga’s live performance and interpretation of Imagine by John Lennon to Jean Sibelius and traditional Azeri music.

Quintard's first recordings were charity based for the National Institute for the Young and Blind (INJA) in Paris where his sister would often sing. He dived deeper into the world of sound and audio engineering and created his first professional recordings for the renowned studio Little Tribeca, where he worked as Studio Manager. During this time, he recorded and produced many award-winning productions such as Schumann, Schubert, Brahms with Lise Berthaud & Adam Laloum and Johann Adolf Hasse: Siroe, Re di Persiaith Max Emmanuel Cenčić & George Petrou. Through several productions since 2012, he developed a friendship with the renown orchestra director Teodor Currentzis who became his mentor and inspired him to research new ways of recording and mixing.

Damien Quintard started recording, mixing and mastering the rising classical star Teodor Currentzis and his orchestra musicAeterna in 2012. Throughout the years, Currentzis became a friend and a mentor who helped improve Quintard's technique and detailed work. Their collaboration resulted in a series of recognized awards, particularly for Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony and Mozart's Don Giovanni that won respectively the Gold and Silver Record Academy Award in Japan – that being the first time in 55 iterations that the same artist wins the top two prizes consecutively.

Damien Quintard (born June 21, 1991) is a sound engineer, producer, composer, musician and songwriter based in Paris. He is the founder and CEO of The Mono Company, a recording, mixing, mastering, producing and consulting company that dwells particularly on research and development about the future of audio-visual technologies. He has produced artists such as Teodor Currentzis, Brian Eno, Arca, and participated in major productions such as the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony of Baku and the DAU project, an immersive art installation in Paris.