Alexander Kouguell: Celebrating a \u201cLong and Interesting Life\u201d as a Cellist and Teacher<\/strong><\/p>\nCellist Alexander Kouguell is a man of the world. A Professor Emeritus of Music who speaks Russian, English, French and Arabic, he has performed in venues from Syria to South America, from France to Flushing. He is, in short, at home wherever music can be played and enjoyed.<\/p>\n
\u201cMusic was my life from the day I was born,\u201d says Kouguell, who notes that teaching music has also been his life\u2014for 68 years at QC, in fact. He joined the college in 1949 when the music department was located in the current power plant building, retired in 1990 at age 70, and returned soon after as an adjunct, working until fall 2017.<\/p>\n
A professional cellist since he was 18, Kouguell was born in Russia to musically gifted parents. With a mother who was a pianist and a father who was a pianist, composer and conductor, Kouguell inherited the \u201cmusic gene\u201d and was playing the piano at the age of four. By the time he was ten, he had \u201cfallen in love with the cello\u201d and has played the instrument exclusively ever since.<\/p>\n
Kouguell\u2019s fluency in Arabic stems from his many years living in Lebanon, where his family moved when he was a child. \u201cMy father founded the music department at the American University of Beirut,\u201d he says, \u201cand my mother also taught there. So I grew up in an academic atmosphere. You can say that I\u2019ve been going to school all my life.\u201d After earning both music teaching and music performing degrees in Paris, Kouguell returned to Beirut, receiving a BA in English and MA in Comparative Literature. The literary field continued to exert a strong appeal for Kouguell, who immigrated to America in 1946 and soon enrolled at Columbia University, where he earned a PhD in Comparative Literature.<\/p>\n
But it was music, which he calls his \u201cfirst love,\u201d that determined the course of his life. When composer and QC graduate Leo Kraft, a member of the college\u2019s music faculty, met Kouguell in New York City, he told him, \u201cWe could use a cellist.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI applied for the job and was accepted,\u201d says Kouguell, who had previously taught for a year at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, where he was also a leading cellist with the Baltimore Symphony.<\/p>\n
During his tenure at the Aaron Copland School of Music (so-named when established in 1981), Kouguell was a member of the Queens College String Quartet composed of faculty musicians. He taught courses including chamber music, stringed instruments, and music appreciation and for 17 years, offered lecture and performance classes on the Beethoven Quartets and the \u201cHistory of String Quartets.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t matter how many students I had in classes\u2014music appreciation sometimes had an enrollment of 50. I enjoyed all of it,\u201d says Kouguell, who was the first coordinator of the Bachelor in Music program.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe college always had a distinguished faculty and excellent students. But now the standards are even higher,\u201d he says. \u201cThe music school is one of the best in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of Kouguell\u2019s students have gone on to head music departments in high schools and at colleges, and others play in U.S. orchestras. Among the graduates with whom he stays in touch are Andrew Luchansky, professor of cello and chamber music at California State University School of Music in Sacramento, Julianne Eberl, music director and conductor in the Portland, Maine public schools, and nearby, Charles Wang, director of strings at Bayside High School.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very grateful I had the opportunity to work with such good people,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Asked about changes that he\u2019s witnessed as a longtime teacher, Kouguell answers, \u201cComputers are on the scene. Students can now learn pieces on YouTube.\u201d Once, when some chamber and cello students attended a class in his home studio\u2014Kouguell and his wife, Florence, live just off campus\u2014they marveled over his records. \u201cThey had never seen LPs!\u201d he says. Kouguell\u2019s own work has been recorded on such major labels as Columbia and Decca; he has donated many of those recordings to the Queens College library.<\/p>\n
In addition to teaching, Kouguell has enjoyed an active performance career as a member of the National Orchestral Association (principal cellist), the Musica Aeterna Orchestra, the Clarion Music Society of New York, the Silver Mine Quartet, and the New York Chamber Soloists. He has toured in Europe, North America, South America, and the Middle East. Having to buy an adjoining seat for his delicate cello whenever he flew, he got used to receiving that airline ticket in the mail addressed to \u201cMr. Cello.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few years ago, he and his wife established the Alexander and Florence Kouguell Cello Scholarship for a talented cello soloist at QC who excels academically and also participates in chamber music and the Queens College Orchestra.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing a teacher has been very satisfying,\u201d Kouguell says. \u201cI\u2019ve also seen lots of countries and made many friends through music. I\u2019ve had a long and interesting life.\u201d<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Name: Alexander Kouguell Title: Professor Emeritus Department: Aaron Copland School of Music Degree(s): PhD, Columbia University, Comparative Literature; MA, Comparative Literature and BA, English, American University of Beirut; undergraduate degrees, Music Teaching and Performance diplomas, \u00c9cole Normale de Musique de Paris Contact Information: alexander.kouguell@gmail.com “Music was my life from the day I was born”- Alexander […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"page_category":[],"wf_page_folders":[137],"class_list":["post-1366","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1932,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1366\/revisions\/1932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"page_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/page_category?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}