Biography
Emmanuel Sowicz (1992) is a British and Chilean guitarist who combines his passion for the guitar’s traditional repertoire with a keen interest in new music and the art of transcription. In 2017 he was awarded First Prize and the Audience Award at the XLIV Dr. Luis Sigall International Music Competition in Viña del Mar – Latin America’s most prestigious classical music competition. In 2018 he became a EuroStrings Artist after winning First Prize by a unanimous decision at the London International Guitar Competition, leading to a European tour across eight countries.
Mr Sowicz’s past performances include engagements at the Presteigne, Spitalfields, Canterbury, and Buckingham festivals, Abbey Road Studios, St Martin-in-the-Fields, and Kings Place, as well as an appearance for Arvo Pärt and Sting at the Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia. In January 2018, he gave a televised concerto performance alongside the National Youth Symphony Orchestra of Chile under maestro Maximiano Valdés, for which he was described as “the next star of the guitar” (Radio Beethoven FM). A month later, he premiered Timothy Bowers’ Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music. In July 2019, he was honoured to offer a concert alongside David Russell in a quartet performance for the José Tomás International Guitar Festival in Petrer, Spain. He has been interviewed for the Lennox Berkeley Society’s annual journal and often appears on El Mercurio newspaper and Radio Beethoven FM.
Emmanuel Sowicz complements his solo career by working with some of the UK’s finest orchestras. In November 2018, he played as part of the Philharmonia Orchestra at Southbank Centre for the UK premiere of Franco Donatoni’s Refrains II and in May 2019, he appeared at Barbican Hall alongside the BBC Symphony Orchestra & BBC Symphony Chorus for the UK premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s Oceana, a cantata inspired in the poetry of the Chilean Nobel Prize laureate Pablo Neruda. He has also been invited to perform at Garsington Opera for the world premiere of David Sawer’s opera The Skating Rink (2018) based on the book by Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, and in 2019 he performed the mandolin solo in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. 2021 saw him perform as part of the Chineke! Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall in London and at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. His enthusiasm for new music has led him to work closely with composers in expanding the guitar’s repertoire, resulting in over a dozen commissions written especially for him and more than twenty premieres, including solo and chamber works as well as concertos.
Born in London to British and Chilean parents, Emmanuel Sowicz graduated from the University of Chile in 2014 under Ernesto Quezada. He later received a scholarship to study with Michael Lewin, Stephen Goss, Fabio Zanon, and David Russell at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he completed his Master of Arts and Advanced Diploma with Distinction, the DipRAM award for an outstanding final recital, and the Dove Prize for his outstanding studentship. While completing his MA, Emmanuel’s passion for Early Music led him to take up theorbo and Early Music studies under Elizabeth Kenny. During his time on the Advanced Diploma program, he also completed a Postgraduate course under Marco Tamayo at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg.
Mr Sowicz’s studies at the Royal Academy of Music were generously supported by the Benjamin Dale Award, Alec Templeton Scholarship, Leverhulme Trust Postgraduate Scholarship, and the SCD Scholarship for Academic Excellence awarded by the Chilean Copyright Protection Society.
Emmanuel Sowicz taught at the Junior Academy of the Royal Academy of Music, London, before relocating to Oxford to pursue his doctoral studies with Professor Laura Tunbridge. He is a Tonebase and Savarez artist and currently performs on a 2023 Carsten Kobs guitar.
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