Piano
Globetrotter at the Piano
"Latin American music is flowing in my veins" - Simon Ghraichy
A pianist with overwhelming energy, powerful touch and impeccable sense of rhythm. Simon Ghraichy has lived in France since he was four years old and feels French in his heart. But as the son of a Mexican mother and a Lebanese father, the French pianist is also closely related to his parents' cultures and devoted to well and lesser known composers from Latin America and the Caribbean. In concert and in the recording studio he shows the musical diversity of the American continent. At the same time, he underlines how the carefree approach of Latin American composers towards forms and rhythms of popular music speaks to a worldwide audience, appealing to both the heart and the intellect. Ghraichy shows that their music is no less demanding than that of their European colleagues, by regularly performing compositions by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Arturo Márquez, Ernesto Lecuona or Gabriela Ortíz together with works by composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Gustav Mahler, Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann.
As a passionate globetrotter who does not believe in pigeonholing, Simon Ghraichy also takes his music to places where classical music otherwise does not play a prominent role. Besides performing in the musical capitals, he gave concerts in Mali for French and American soldiers, played in the Roman forum of the ancient city of Baalbek only 60 km from the Syrian border or performed in a refugee camp in Indonesia. He also played at a Parisian school in front of students from educationally disadvantaged families. Simon Ghraichy has worked with such renowned orchestras as the American Symphony Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestras of the States of Mexico and of Brazil, the Lebanon Philharmonic Orchestra, the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, the Almaty Symphony Orchestra and the Guadalajara Youth Orchestra. He has also collaborates with the Orchestre Royal de Liège and the Orchestre National de Bretagne. He records for Deutsche Grammophon.
Simon Ghraichy joined the "Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Boulogne-Billancourt" at the age of 16, studied at the "Conservatoire national supérieur de musique" in Paris and at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Michel Béroff, Daria Hovora and Tuija Hakkila where among his professors. He received master classes from Cyprien Katsaris, Jean-Philippe Collard, Gergely Bogányi and Jerome Lowenthal. After being awardes with multiple prizes, Ghraichy's career took off after an enthusiastic review by journalist Robert Hughes in the Wall Street Journal. Since then he has performed at festivals such as UNiSA in South Africa, the Serbian festival EXIT and the South Korean festival Isang Yun. Simon Ghraichy lives in Paris.
MANAGEMENT FOR:
Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Scandinavian countries (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark), the Baltic states and the Commonwealth of Independent States CIS (except for the Russian Federation)
r.schwarzstein@berin-iglesias.art