Paxos Festival

Vasilis Digos

Vasilis Digos was born in Athens. He completed the first cycle of his music studies in the Vironas conservatory with his father, Tasos Digos as his first teacher. Then, he continued with a scholarship in the Athens Conservatory with Kostas Kotsiolis as his teacher, achieving yet another scholarship to continue his studies at the Juliard School, USA. He has also graduated top of his class from the Music Department of the Ionian University (Corfu) and the National and Kapodistrian University (Athens). He is currently completing his thesis in the department of Historic and Systematic Musicology in the Athens University under the title: “The importance of Classical Guitar in Greece in the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries”.

He has won more than 20 international awards with one of the most important being the 1st prize in the Andres Segovia International Competition. He was the first guitarist ever to win first prize in the European Contest “Eurovision Young Musicians” (2014) and also the first one to win two awards in two different categories in the Gina Bachauer competition. His success in the Eurovision Contest opened the doors for him to the most prominent radio and tv stations worldwide like Radio Germany, Austrian ORF, WDR, RadioBudapest, NPO Klassiek, Radio France and cooperation with important orchestras like the Kolone Symphonic Orchestra WDR. He has worked with the Greek National Symphonic Orchestra and the Contemporary Music Orchestra of our National TV station, ERT.

He gave his first international recital at the age of 14 and since then he has been performing in many countries all over Europe.

Grammy award winner Leo Brower has written a piece for him especially. Other composers like Evgeny Baev, Parashos Maniatis and Haris Pelonis have also written works for him especially.

He recorded his first album for ERT in 2014 with works by Luys De Narvaez, Joaquin Turina, Leo Brouwer as well as the Mario C. Tedesco Concerto.