[Samy Elgazzar, BM, MMus]

“Twenty-five centuries ago Herodotus called Egypt ‘the Gift of the Nile’. For most of its length, the valley of the Nile is no more than a few miles wide, starkly bordered by ocher deserts that stretch to the sea. Massed within this fragile strip of green is an astonishing concentration of life: both the life of today and the wealth of past lives extending back to the birth of civilization. There are the temples and tombs of the pharaohs, the desert monasteries of the early Christians, the mosques and capitals of caliphs and sultans, khedives, kings and presidents.”
(Max Rodenbeck, American author and journalist for the Economist magazine)

This mystical land with its natural beauties and majestic monuments forever defined the inspiration of composer, orchestrator and educator Samy Elgazzar. He was born in Alexandria of an Egyptian father and a Greek mother. The latter taught him extensively his Greek heritage, while at a very young age traveled to Greece and experienced its natural splendors and stupendous ancient civilization. Alexandria has been constantly a well of new and diverse artists and writers, and indeed in several cases important ones, e.g. Constantine Cavafy, Omar Sharif, Demis Roussos, Nagib Mahfouz, etc. Following his instinct, one day he expressed to his parents his wish to study music. Thus, Samy started his music studies at the Conservatory of Alexandria, by studying theory, solfège and classical guitar. Captivated by the sound of the piano and its powerful capacity as a compositional tool, he gave up the guitar and started piano lessons. It is then that he started composing and creating complete pieces. Beautiful, memorable melodies and passionate moods were the main aspects of his music, characteristics of all Mediterranean composers. His style never changed since then.

His musical explorations culminated by earning a B.M. in Composition from Berklee College of Music in Boston, with honors (Magna Cum Laude) and a ‘Youth Concerts at Symphony Hall’ award. He studied under distinguished and awarded composers such as Thomas Hojnacki, John Bavicchi, Gregory Fritze, Dennis Leclair, Thomas McGah, and Scott Fessler. Fascinated by the art of music engraving, he pursued a specialized study in music notation (by hand and computer application) for a year and half with Rich Grudzinski and Mark McGrain. During his studies in the United States he was highly regarded within the academic community. As a young promising composer, Thomas Hojnacki introduced him to the highly acclaimed composer and ethnomusicologist Halim El-Dabh, for guidance and advice. Later he became well acquainted with Berklee’s former president Lee Eliot Berk who endorsed Samy's talent and dedication with a recommendation letter. Furthermore, Mr. Elgazzar had the honor of personally meeting and briefly chatting with the founder of Berklee College of Music, Lawrence Berk. After graduation, Mr. Elgazzar was commended by President Berk to become the President Chapter of Greek and Cypriot Berklee alumni in Greece. Having an undiminished motivation for continuous and diverse learning, Samy did not limit his higher education to Berklee College of Music. He studied music, technology, and e-learning courses at several institutions, including Dean College, Boston University, University of the West of Scotland, University of Manchester, and UC San Diego Extension. In 2014 he received his master degree in Songwriting with distinction from Bath Spa University. His culminating dissertation was in classical crossover (Popera) songwriting.

Moving to Athens after his graduation from Berklee in 1993, he started teaching classical and contemporary music theory and music technology courses in several conservatories. Gradually and through extensive research he wrote a manual of classical and contemporary music theory, “Fundamentals of Musicianship”, and a music technology manual, “Introduction to Music Technology”, both of which have been adopted as the official text books by several conservatories where he taught. As a new music teacher, he never confined his teaching material to the proposed curriculum of the conservatory. On the contrary, he revised all course curricula he taught in order to conform to the contemporary American and European teaching methods. His fluency in English and French allowed him to research a wider bibliography in music theory subjects when designing the curriculum for courses such as jazz harmony, jazz counterpoint, arranging, instrumentation, orchestration, jazz composition and music notation. An example of his continuous research is an online lecture on how Rock evolved from Blues, published in 2008. Being a strong advocate of music technology since 1991, he developed the curriculum for an introductory course in Music Technology and conducted related workshops. He has often taught for free, both at the conservatory and privately, to help gifted and hard-working students with financial difficulties progress in their music studies. Outside of the classroom, he actively provided a wide range of pastoral support to students, including course selection and prerequisites, how to effectively study at home and cope with issues with teachers and peers. Furthermore he is continuously motivated to build a positive and caring learning environment with students, parents and staff.

Since 1997, he leads a successful career as an orchestrator and arranger, and is specialized in orchestral arrangements and orchestral transcriptions (re-orchestrations). He has collaborated with a wide range of international artists and organizations, arranging and orchestrating songs and large-scale classical pieces. Noted collaborations include Special Olympics, Stefanos Korkolis, Colin Schachat, Michael Karras, Dresden Music Festival, etc. His work has been performed by numerous orchestras and ensembles in major concert halls and festivals in Europe, USA, and Israel. Samy’s scores have been performed by prestigious symphony and chamber orchestras and concert bands: Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Puellarum Pragensis, Raanana Symphonette Orchestra, Feminarte, Camerata, Leipzig Philharmonic Orchestra, Sofia Radio Symphony Orchestra, etc. His orchestrations have been released by major and independent record labels, such as BMG, Universal, Polydor, Legend, etc. In 2002 and 204 he had the privilege to participate as an arranger in The Sunday of Orthodoxy Concert, a musical event in tribute to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Constantinople.

In 2005, Samy collaborated with a group of talented musicians to release the debut album of Honest Touch, titled “Memories From A Dream”. Samy composed, arranged and produced the album. In 2002, his song “Luce Lontana” won First Prize in the instrumental category and Third overall in the WCS Song Contest. In 2006, the album was nominated among the Finalists of the 2007 Independent Music Awards (USA) in the New Age category and was voted as the people’s favorite New Age album in the “Vox Populi” Jukebox voting. Among the judges of these prestigious awards were, Peter Gabriel, Ozzy Osbourne, and Suzanne Vega. The Honest Touch project has gained much success and favorable reviews from Europe, USA and Canada. Parallel to his other professional obligations, Samy is a very active copyist, both by hand and computer, for many years. He is regarded as an expert in Finale music notation program and was among the Finale support team for the Greek dealer Fagotto Music. In 1997 he founded ScoreMasters®, then a team of professional music copyists. Today, ScoreMasters offers a multitude of music and dance production services. In 2014 Samy received a Master of Music in Songwriting with Distinction from Bath Spa University. The subject for both his dissertation and final project was Classical Crossover (Popera) songwriting.

When he is not writing or teaching music, Mr. Elgazzar is busy building plastic model kits, playing tennis or soccer with his son Amiro, walking in the mountains, travelling, reading, going to the movies or theatre, collecting animation movies and playing board games!