Marko Topchii
Saturday, February 22, 2025
7:30 pm
Sundin Music Hall
Hamline University
Multi-award-winning classical guitarist Marko Topchii was born in 1991 to a musical family in Ukraine. His prodigious achievements are best exemplified by his numerous competition victories: More than 100 awards worldwide in international classical guitar competitions, 55 of them being first prizes in prestigious competitions including the 54th International Guitar Competition Francisco Tarrega, the 35th International Guitar Competition Andres Segovia in Spain, the 50th International Guitar Competition Michele Pittaluga in Italy, the 6th JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition in New York, the 16th Jan Edmund Jurkowski Memorial Guitar Competition in Poland, the Maurizio Biasini competition in San Francisco, the 56th Tokyo International Guitar Competition and most recently, the 2023 Guitar Foundation of America International Concert Artist Competition in New York.
Marko Topchii has appeared in the world’s most important venues, including the Carnegie Hall in New York, Yamaha Ginza Hall in Tokyo, Salle Cortot in Paris, Grand Hall of the Kyiv Philharmonic, Grand Hall of Liszt Academy in Budapest, among others. He often collaborates with orchestras, having performed more than 15 concertos for guitar and orchestra. His discography includes the albums “Marko Topchii” on Naxos’ Fleur de Son Classics label (US) and “Stars of the Guitar” with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (as the winner of the Michele Pittaluga competition) on Naxos, as well as “Van Gogh Fire” and “Carnival” (following his win in the Tarrega Guitar Competition in 2021) on the Contrastes Records label in Spain.
Marko started studying the guitar at the age of four, under Volodymyr Homenyuk, and graduated from the Kharkiv Conservatory at the age of 21, where he studied under Volodymyr Dotsenko, an Honoured Artist of Ukraine. He continued with a three-year postgraduate programme at the Kyiv Music Academy under Yuri Aleksik, Honoured Artist of Ukraine. In 2018, he joined the professional studies programme of the San Francisco Conservatory in the class of Judicaёl Perroy, with whom he continued his studies at Haute Ecole de Musique de Geneve as part of the Master Soloiste programme.
Marko Topchii uses strings provided by Augustine and plays a Julian Dammann guitar.