Universally praised for her profound artistic sensitivity, her exquisite sound and for her unmatched palette of colors and dynamics, the Greek guitarist Antigoni Goni is internationally acclaimed as a true ambassador of the guitar and a sought-after pedagogue.
As a child in the 1970s, during the dictatorship of Papadopoulos’ Junta, Antigoni Goni was deeply exposed to the resistance music by Mikis Theodorakis. She fell in love with the colours, rhythms, and pathos of this music and at the age of seven she asked to her parents to study guitar. Unfortunately, the Suzuki method did not yet exist at the time, and had to wait three years before she could hold a guitar in her hands.
At the age of 10 she begun studying the guitar with Evangelos Assimakopoulos and a decade later she left Greece to continue her studies with John Mills and Julian Bream at the Royal Academy in London.
In 1988 she won the special price for the best interpretation of Latin American music at the International Guitar Competition in La Habana, Cuba. Immediately after she started her soloist career being personally chosen by the guitar legend Julian Bream himself as the 1990 winner of the prestigious Julian Bream prize which she received from the hands of Lady Diana.
In 1991 she moved to the United States of America where in 1995 she completed her Master Degree with the highest distinction with Sharon Isbin at The Juilliard School in New York City.
Other central mentors of her life as a guitarist, who directed and supported both for her artistic and personal growth, are Leo Brouwer and Oscar Ghiglia.
Since early 1990s she performed virtually everywhere, in concert halls such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Covent Garden and the Wigmore Hall in London, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Acropolis (Athens) as well as the Philharmonic and the Cappella Sale in St. Petersburg, the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, and Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall in New york to mention just a few.
In 1995 Antigoni Goni added to an already long list of competition prizes the first prize of the enormously prestigious “Guitar Foundation of America Competition”, thus becoming the first Greek (and, to present, the only) to ever win it.
For her International achievements, the Royal Academy of Music in London awarded her with the honorary title of Associate Professor (ARAM).
She is the founder of the Guitar Department at the Pre-College Division of Juilliard School of Music of New York where she also taught for 10 years. She also taught for ten years as an adjunct professor at the Columbia University.
Since 2005 Antigoni Goni has been Professor of Guitar at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels (Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel) and a member of its Artistic Committee. In April 2015, the Royal Conservatory named her “Professor of the year” making her the youngest professor ever presented with the “Madame de la Hault” prize, awarded by the Brussels Royal Conservatory’s “Patrimonium”.
In 2007 she founded and started directing “the Volterra Project, Summer Guitar Institute”, an innovative Classical Guitar workshop that every summer gathers in Tuscany (Italy) international students and professionals of the highest caliber for ten days of intense study and inspired performances.
As a NAXOS and KOCH recording artist, her highly successful recordings have been praised for being « expressively poetic and technically exciting » and have been received with great enthusiasm by the international musical community. At least a dozen of the pieces she has recorded, have been included in Enrique Robichaud’s classical guitar Cd guide: Guitar’s TOP 100 Best.
Her last CD “Hymn to the Muse” is a collection of original works and transcriptions directly inspired by Greek culture and heritage and as Italian Magazine DOT Guitar states “an exceptional recording which confirms without doubt Antigoni Goni as one of the greatest performers of the guitar on the world stage.”
Antigoni Goni plays a 1989 José Romanillos and a 2012 Andrea Tacchi Guitar.
