Madroños

Evangelos Assimakopoulos studied the guitar in Athens at the National Conservatoire under Dimitris Fampas. He completed his degree in 1960 and was unanimously awarded First Prize and the Medal for Outstanding Performance. That same year he won First Prize in the Naples International Guitar Competition (Italy). Shortly afterwards he was awarded a scholarship to study with the Presti-Lagoya duo in France and Andrès Segovia in Spain. Since 1959 Evangelos Assimakopoulos has given many solo recitals throughout Greece. In 1965 he married guitarist Liza Zoe and together they established Greece's first guitar duo. Today they are considered to be one of the leading guitar duos in the world. Not only have the two Greek musicians been acclaimed by major newspapers, including The New York Times, Daily Telegraph, Paris Matin, Chicago Sun and Los Angeles Times, but they also earned the esteem of the great Andrès Segovia himself, who wrote: "Since Fate cruelly deprived us of Presti - Lagoya, I no longer had the pleasure of listening to any similar duo. But lately, when the talented Greek guitarists Evangelos and Liza played for me, I felt complete satisfaction and enjoyment. I cordially wish Evangelos and Liza to conquer the high esteem of the public as they have conquered mine!" Since 1967 Evangelos & Liza have carried out extensive tours all over the world and given hundreds of recitals in some of the most renowned concert halls, including Carnegie Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall, La Théâtre de la Ville, Lincoln Center and Herodion. They have also performed for many radio and television stations (the BBC, Paris RTVF, Brussels, Madrid, Cologne, Berlin etc.) and taken part in major festivals in, among other places, New York, Boston, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rome and Mexico. They also appear as duo soloists with well known symphony orchestras such as those of Montreal, Michigan, Cincinnati and Birmingham, as well as teaching seminars and holding Master-classes at universities and academies overseas including The Juilliard School, The Royal Academy of Music, The Royal College of Music, UCLA, Stony Brook University and Mannes College of Music. Both Greek and foreign composers have written pieces especially for Evangelos and Liza; at the same time the two musicians have enriched a rather meagre guitar duo repertoire with transcriptions and arrangements of their own. They have produced several records and CDs of works for one and two guitars that are available on the EMI Classics label. Finally, over his 50 years of teaching, Evangelos Assimakopoulos has established a school of outstanding guitarists who have made a name for themselves both in Greece and abroad.