Artistic director & Founder
Juan Carlos Muñoz
Baroque mandolin
Juan Carlos Muñoz has studied with Sylvain Dagosto in France. He is a graduate of the Conservatoire d’Esch/Alzette and graduated in the mandolin from the « Hochschule für Musik » in Cologne after studying with Professor Marga Wilden-Hüsgen. While still very young he embarked on a concert career, giving pride of place right from the start to constant and ever deepening study of the Baroque mandolin and early music in general.
His busy solo schedule has taken him to Japan several times, as well as the USA, Canada, France, Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Latvia, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Iceland. He has also initiated many musical projects of his own, including the creation of numerous ensembles (Duo Calace, Luxembourg Mandolin Quintet, Duo Muñoz-Pavón, Il Forum Musicale, Artemandoline). He is co-founder of the Stage International de Mandoline et de Guitare and artistic director of the First International Mandolin Competition in Luxembourg. With the ensemble Artemandoline, formed in 2001, Juan Carlos Muñoz chose to go back to the original documents in order to the establish the true pedigree of this incomparable family of instruments. He had made a major contribution to launching a movement to encourage musical freshness and rigour. To ensure that music composed in the past does not sound like mere ‘early music’ in the present, the performers must manage to be sufficiently free, spontaneous, anticipative and astonished in their intimate act of creation and the newness it engenders. Juan Carlos Muñoz spend his lives searching out and reviving forgotten masterpieces of the mandolin repertory. He’s not content with simply presenting his finds like ‘musical archaeologists’, but endeavour to transmit them to the wider public by means of the essential act of communication between interpreters, composers, and listeners. He is regularly invited to give masterclasses throughout Europe, USA and in Japan and takes part in a number of international competitions as a jury member (Spain, Japan, Germany, Italy, Belgium..). He teaches the mandolin and chamber music at the Conservatory of Esch/Alzette (Luxembourg) and at the « Hochschule für Musik » (University of Music) in Saarbrücken (Germany).