Evangelos Boudounis

Evangelos Boudounis was born in Athens, studied guitar in National Conservatoire under scholarship and graduated from Dimitris Famba’s class with an “exceptional performance” award. Among his teachers were Jose Tomas, Alexander Lagoya and Alirio Diaz. Furthermore, he had the opportunity to meet Andres Segovia and continue his guitar studies under the guidance of the grand master in Granada and in Madrid. But it wasn’t till 1975 that Evangelos Boudounis met not only his greatest teacher but also a dear friend, Manos Hadjidakis.

He has been awarded first prizes in numerous guitar contests all over the world such as the “Andres Segovia” contest of Santiago de Compostella Academy (Spain), the National guitar contest of Vivaldi Academy (Milan, Italy), the Viotti National contest of Vercelli winning the “Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco” prize. His concerting and reciting activities include appearances in most European countries – France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Holland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Cyprus-, in former USSR as well as in Canada and in the USA.

1988 was the beginning of the Maro Razi – Evangelos Boudounis guitar duet. Till now, they have appeared in numerous festivals (Athens, Patras, Constantinoupolis etc.), they have appeared as soloists with Camerata-orchestra of music-friends. Colour Orchestra and Patra s Orchestra (among others). They have recorded four CDs (“Recital for two”, “LET IT BEatles”, “A Song for Manos – vol. 1, 2”). Evangelos Boudounis has worked on perfecting the guitar’s sound quality and on improving the guitarist’s playing technique. He has written nine book series on the guitar technique which has been published by Papagrigoriou-Nakas editions. This series deals with important technical matters (scales, arpeggios, ligatures) as well as with more specialized technique-wise issues (Horizontal and vertical exercises, stretching, apoyado-tirado exercises and more. He was especially concerned with the position and movement of the left arm on the fret-board reconsidering many taboos that still exist in fingering.

Transcriptions, fingerings and editing were made over a massive amount of guitar repertoire starting from the early classes to reach the late ones (Recital 1-10, Papagrigoriou-Nakas editions). In 1999 a guitar method for beginners was published -the “debut”- as well as all of Bach’s lute works transcripted for the guitar (Papagrigoriou-Nakas editions). For years, he has been a composer thus enriching the guitar’s repertoire with works for one or two guitars while having composed three concert-style suites for two guitars and orchestra (“LET IT BEatles”, “On the Rocks”, “A song for Manos”) which have already been presented in Athens Music Hall (Megaron) and in Lycabetus with various orchestras (Camerata-music-friends Orchestra, Patras orchestra). Since 1996, he has been a member of the Greek Musician s Union.

Many important guitarists have graduated from his school and among them are some who have an international career. Since 1998 he has the responsibility of the Classical Guitar in the National Conservatoire of Athens.

In 1986 he founded the “Guitarists”, a first appearing orchestra in Greece and one of the few existing in Europe which is consisted by graduated students. He currently conducts this orchestra. A combination of his artistic and teaching activities are thf Guitar festivals of Rethymno (1985-1986), Ioannina (1988-1993) and Patras (1994-today) of which he has been inspirer and creator. He has also been the main teacher of the seminars curricular of these specific festivals.

Source: Boudounis.com