Growing up in Buffalo, Jason Vieaux had as much fun learning how to play classical guitar as he did playing soccer and throwing a ball around with his friends. Then at 12, he had the chance to perform a full-length recital.
“I was really nervous leading up to the concert and wasn’t sure I could do it,” says the seasoned, Grammy winning musician. “There was an internal pressure I was putting on myself, and my father told me if one person shows up, you have to play for that person, even if it’s only them. That’s something a professor would say, so my dad was kind of wise in that way.”
By intermission of the recital, Jason savored the applause he was receiving and realized he was having great fun. “That’s when performing classical guitar music became a thing for me,” he says with a smile.
A few years later, he was taking master classes in Rochester from internationally acclaimed guitarists such as Liona Boyd, Carlos Barbosa-Lima, Jorge Morel and a Grammy Award-winning Scottish guitarist named David Russell.
“I would just play through everything at breakneck speed, and David would get me to focus on mechanics, like left hand, fourth finger,” Jason recalls. “David, or maybe it was these other teachers, would tell my parents that if we were in Europe, I might be playing professionally, and that I just needed development. That I should go to a music program in the States or Canada.”
Jason and his family explored several music conservatories before settling on The Cleveland Institute of Music, where he enrolled in the fall of 1990. Jason loved the concentrated study of music and classical guitar at CIM under his teacher John Holmquist, head of the guitar program. He also studied with another international guitar phenomenon, Ricardo Iznaola.
His junior year, he won the Guitar Foundation of America International Competition, one of the biggest prizes for classical guitar in the world, and had to take a year off from school to perform a 53-city tour in the U.S. and France. In a bold move, he worked with producers Alan Bise and Jim Bonney, his fellow Bachelor students, to record his first album simply called Guitar, to sell it on the tour. His parents paid for the pressing, then Jason paid them back from the sales. He used any extra tour earnings to pay off his tuition at CIM.
He graduated from CIM in 1995, and at 21, he toured seven countries in Southeast Asia as an Artistic Ambassador of the United States. When that tour was over, he took 2nd Prize in the Naumberg Competition in New York and won a top prize. Today, Jason performs concerts throughout the U.S. and the world.
Gramophone Magazine cited Jason for his “eloquent and vibrant performances” on disc, and The New York Times hailed his live performances as “virtuosic, flamboyant, dashing and, sometimes ineffably lyrical.”
“Jason is a musician’s musician,” says Bise, producer, Azica Records, Cleveland. “He is comfortable in any genre and has a wide ranging knowledge of all styles of music. He plays the guitar like a chamber musician, not a guitarist. Mechanics never get in the way of musicality, and as listeners and audience members, we are fortunate to be able to enjoy that gift.”
Jason has performed with a long list of orchestras including Cleveland, Toronto, St. Louis, Houston, Columbus, and has made premiere recordings with the Nashville Symphony and the Norrköping Symphony. He has recorded 17 albums. In 2014, Jason won the Best Instrumental Classical Solo Grammy Award for “Play.” His new album is due out in November.
He’s been on the faculty at CIM since 1997 and head of the guitar department since 2001, and in 2011, he cofounded the guitar department at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Knowing he wouldn’t be home much, he considers Cleveland a great place to live as an artist and be with his wife Erine, their two children and friends. “I still practice every day when I’m at home, but not as much because I love to spend time with my kids,” Jason says. “But every day I analyze my repertoire and determine what I need to work on.”
As for how he selects songs to perform or record, Jason says: “I play a guitar piece if I like or love it, and these days I try not to analyze the process as much. If you asked me 30 years ago, I’d say, ‘Well, I’m looking for something that has more organized structure, a sonata form, or Bach suites.’ Later on, I began to trust myself. If it catches my ear, if I like it, then my audiences will like it, too.”
You can find Jason’s music and touring information on Instagram @jasonvieauxguitar
and his website https://jasonvieaux.com/.