Alexandre Lagoya

Alexandre Lagoya was among the foremost guitarists from the twentieth hundred years. Given birth to in Alexandria, Egypt, to a Greek dad and Italian mom, he began severe study of your guitar like a prodigious eight-year-old at the neighborhood conservatory. In 1948, he relocated to Paris and analyzed acoustic guitar with Jean Saudry and structure with Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. By this time around, he had been a veteran from the recital stage with an increase of than 500 concerts to his credit. Lagoya later on analyzed with Andrés Segovia during summers at Siena. It had been right here, in 1950, that he fulfilled his potential wife, virtuoso guitarist Ida Presti. The few wedded in 1952 and made a decision to forego their mainly successful solo professions to be able to type a duo. Their decision was dangerous: Segovia as well as others had been still pressing for wide approval of your guitar as a single instrument; furthermore, repertory for duo guitarists was virtually nonexistent. The set initially performed transcriptions of key pad functions by Bach, Debussy, Falla, as well as others, but they ultimately drew commissions from prominent composers. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco published a Concerto for just two guitars to them, aswell as the Preludes and Fugues (24). Extra works originated from Joaquín Rodrigo, André Jolivet, as well as others. The two produced numerous recordings through the 15 many years of their collaboration and gave around 2,000 concerts. Presti passed away in 1967 from problems of lung malignancy. Her premature moving was a damaging blow to Lagoya: he withdrew from overall performance, but took on the professorship in the Paris Conservatory in 1969. Beginning in 1960, he previously taught a summer time course in acoustic guitar in the International Academy of Music in Good along with his wife, a task he continuing after her loss of life. Among his learners on the Fine Academy was the now-famous Canadian guitarist Liona Boyd. Lagoya resumed his single profession in 1972 and in addition returned towards the documenting studio. His camaraderie with composer/pianist Claude Bolling led to the latter’s Concerto for traditional electric guitar and jazz piano trio in 1979, which he afterwards documented with Bolling. Lagoya continued to be active through the entire 1980s and for some of the next 10 years, though he retired from his content on the Paris Conservatory and Fine Academy in 1994.