Jad Azkoul, concert guitarist
“Jad Azkoul’s playing, warm and intimate, reaches out to his audience”.
Wigmore Hall debut, London
Colin Cooper, Classical Guitar
“Une excellente technique, une virtuosité, une clarté polyphonique qui caractérisent les grands guitaristes, mais aussi une grande simplicité de jeu, un refus du ‘spectaculaire’, le souci de faire de la musique, une approche esthétique très grave, très profonde des oeuvres, une attention soutenue portée aux problèmes de sonorités, tel est le bilan que l’on peut dresser à l’issue du concert.”
Festival de Menton
René Doumène, Nice Matin
What is really surprising is that New York born Jad Azkoul didn’t turn to classical music until he was in his early 20’s. Throughout high school and university, even while writing a thesis for his MA in psychology, he played electric guitar in rock bands. When his passion for music overtook him, rather than work for a PhD in his academic field, he attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston studying arranging and composiition of jazz, as well as guitar with William Leavitt. In spite of two years and excellent grades at that school, he left for Paris to immerse himself fully into classical music.
Over a period of five years, and one after another, Carel Harms, Alexandre Lagoya, Oscar Caceres, and Alberto Ponce taught him classical guitar, while Pierre Petit, Nadia Boulanger, Narcis Bonet and Tony Aubin coached him in composition, analysis and orchestration.The real breakthrough came, however, when he met the legendary pedagogue, composer and virtuoso Abel Carlevaro. After several encounters and finally three intensive years of study in Montevideo, Uruguay, he later became one of the Maestro’s principal teaching assistants.
Jad is a tenured professor of guitar at the Conservatoire Populaire de Musique in Geneva and is faculty member of the SSPM, the Swiss Society for Music Pedagogy. He had previously taught at the American Unversity and the Catholic University in Washington, D.C.
Since 1984, Jad has been giving masterclasses in many countries around the world. In 2006, he was chosen to give the guitar masterclass at the annual ASTA conference in St. Louis, Missouri. Every summer since 1985, he has conducted a fortnightly summer workshop in France. As of 2006, he is on the faculty of the Musicalta international summer festival in Alsace (France).
Recipient of annual scholarships by the French government (1974-1978) and by the Uruguayan government (1978-1979), Jad won the Affiliated Artists Award in New York (1984) and has also been knighted with the National Order of the Cedar by the Lebanese President (1988).
He is a founding member of the Gentlemen Quartet, along with his son Julian on violin, and another father and son combination on flute and cello, Dominique and Arthur Guignard.
Jad has publishced articles in international guitar magazines, and has translated, amongst other works, Carlevaro’s “School of Guitar” into English and French. He has performed in festivals around the globe including venues at the Wigmore Hall (London), the Tchaikovsky Hall (Moscow), the Southern California Center for the Arts (Los Angeles) and at MIT (Boston). He appears in recital, in chamber music concerts and as orchestral soloist.
He has produced two widely acclaimed CDs: “Latin Illustrations for Guitar” and “From Granada to Buenos Aires” on the French label Forlane. Jad Azkoul lives in Geneva with his two sons and wife, speaks four languages fluently, and is interested in reading, tennis and the Alexander Technique.
