BENOIT ALBERT

 

Classical guitar

France

As a solo guitarist, chamber musician and composer, French guitarist Benoît Albert is a unique and versatile voice in the world of classical guitar.

Benoît Albert grew up in Charente, in a Southwest region of France. As a very young man he was inspired by pop, progressive rock and classical music. Later on, at the age of 14, he decided to study classical guitar. He acquired his formal education at the Conservatoire de Bordeaux and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, where he graduated with top honors. His teachers were Olivier Chassain, Carel Harms, Pierre Laurent Aimard, Frédéric Durieux, Laszlo Adadi and Christophe Coin.

He has co-created productions involving modern dance (Laurène Albert and Pierre Michaël Faure), paintings/etching (Paul Storey and Pierre Cambon), and chamber music (Suonatori, les Frères Méduses, Duo Laborde-Albert and la Compagnie des Arts). More recently he co composed with Randall Avers silent film music (Tod Browning and Georges Méliès). 

As a solo performer, he develops a program featuring 3 guitars (2 historical), and 3 composers covering 200 years of music and guitar making history. This specific program is a collaboration with the guitar maker Erik Pierre Hofmann.

As a performer, Albert has toured Europe, Venezuela, the US, and Malaysia. His compositions for solo and chamber music and his CDs are published by Les Productions d’Oz (Canada). He has recorded nine CDs, four of which are comprised entirely of his own work.

As a composer Albert describes his musical language as modal with a broad rhythmical spectrum reflecting popular music influences from Eastern Europe and North/South America as well as French impressionistic music and electronic music.

Since September 2014, Benoît Albert is guitar Professor at the Conservatoire (C.R.R.) and the Pôle Supérieur (I.S.D.A.T.) of Toulouse - France.