Fahmi Alqhai’s career has been marked from the outset by breaking the technical and artistic limits imposed on his instrument, the viola da gamba. Drawing on his own multicultural background and a musical personality as strong as it is restless, Alqhai has brought the viola da gamba “into a new realm of joyful potential”, according to Gramophone magazine.
Spanish, but the son of a Palestinian mother and a Syrian father, Alqhai has built his musical career on the most rigorous historically informed practice, and from there has made the viola da gamba soar into new realms of virtuosity and creativity. Reviving the figure of the composer-performer, his versatile career alternates research into the music of the past with collaborations with artists from other styles, from jazz to flamenco.
After growing up between Seville (Spain) and Homs (Syria) and teaching himself music through rock, Fahmi Alqhai gained a thorough grounding in historically informed orthodoxy through long years of study with Vittorio Ghielmi and Ventura Rico, and of concerts with artists of the calibre of Jordi Savall, while also graduating with distinction in Dentistry. He soon founded his own ensemble, Accademia del Piacere, with which he offers his distinctive vision of the Italian Seicento (his first CD, Le Lacrime di Eros, won the Prelude Classical Music Award 2009) and of the great French repertoire for viola da gamba (Les Violes du Ciel et de l’Enfer, nominated for the International Classical Music Awards 2011). Since then he has alternated historically informed performance with creation and cross-cultural fusion with other musical worlds. In 2012 the Bienal de Sevilla, perhaps the most important flamenco festival in the world, awarded him the Giraldillo for Best Music for Las idas y las vueltas, a musical adventure with flamenco singer Arcángel that he has since taken to the Konzerthaus in Vienna (Austria), the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Kölner Philharmonie (Germany), the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon (Portugal), the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid (Spain) and many other venues in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
His later recordings include Rediscovering Spain (devoted to Spanish music of the Golden Age; awarded the Choc de Classica in France and named Toccata’s CD of the Month in Germany; the album was also recently performed at the Berlin Philharmonie), Diálogos (with flamenco singer Rocío Márquez; winner of the Giraldillo for Innovation in 2016 at the Bienal de Flamenco de Sevilla), The Bach Album (solo viola da gamba; GEMA Audience Award for Best Recording 2016, Melómano de Oro and Scherzo “Disco Excepcional”) and Muera Cupido (with soprano Núria Rial; winner of the 2020 OPUS KLASSIK Award in Germany for Best Opera Recital). His latest CD, Colombina, revisits the Sevillian manuscript of the same name (15th century), made possible by a BBVA Foundation Leonardo Grant.
Fahmi Alqhai has received the City of Seville Medal, and since 2009 he has been director of the city’s Early Music Festival, the most important in Spain.