Biography
Hailed by France Musique as the new face of the classical guitar, Raphaël Feuillâtre regularly delights audiences and critics worldwide with his charismatic artistry. The French guitarist, whose repertoire embraces everything from Johann Sebastian Bach and Rameau to contemporary compositions by Roland Dyens and Sérgio Assad, possesses the technical mastery and creative vision required to make works from all periods sound as if they were written yesterday – alive, heartfelt, filled with colour.
The jaw-dropping precision of his technique is allied to a profound feeling for melodic line, qualities that combine to give the impression that the instrument’s sound is somehow sustained by the player’s breath. “My goal is always to allow the guitar to sing,” he observes. “So many things in music start with song. The guitar is an intermediary between me and the audience that lets me sing and and convey emotion. I get so immersed in the soundworld of whatever I’m playing that I totally forget about my instrument.”
Feuillâtre has performed at the world’s most prestigious venues and festivals, including New York’s Carnegie Hall and Town Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, La Folle Journée in Nantes, the Edinburgh International Festival and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, among many more. Passionate about chamber music, he has worked with such leading musicians as trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary, recorder player Lucie Horsch, and violinist and fellow DG artist María Dueñas, with whom he appeared at a classics-meets-club Yellow Lounge event at Berlin’s Säälchen in May 2023.
Keen to pass on his love of music and the guitar, Raphaël teaches at the Pont Supérieur de Bretagne, is co-founder of the Lille Guitar Academy and gives masterclasses in Europe and North America. As a talented and prolific arranger, he has also added numerous works to his instrument’s repertoire, several of which feature in his recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, with whom he signed in September 2022, becoming the first guitarist in many years to join the Yellow Label.
Released in March 2023, his DG debut album Visages baroques presented a selection of keyboard works – by J.S. Bach, Rameau, Duphly, Royer and Forqueray – translated by Feuillâtre and others into the colourful soundworld of the guitar. “[His] supple sensitivity underpins a formidable yet remarkably unshowy expressive power,” wrote BBC Music Magazine. “It’s an exquisite, joyfully presented programme.”
His second DG album, Spanish Serenades, was released on 6 June 2025. On the programme this time is music by Albéniz, Granados, Llobet, Rodrigo and Tárrega, including five of Feuillâtre’s own inventive transcriptions of works for solo piano. Among these are Granados’s Andaluza, which he performs with María Dueñas. Spanish Serenades also features his first recordings with orchestra – he takes the solo role in Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, accompanied by the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra and Gábor Takács-Nagy.
This summer Feuillâtre gives three solo recitals in France: at Font-Romeu in the Pyrenees, the Festival Jeudis Musicaux in Corme-Écluse and Musiques Baroques in Savennières (12, 21 and 29 August). Highlights of the new season include a recital at the Via Aeterna Festival in Normandy (4 October); Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez in Bezons and Échirolles (7/8 October) and at the Arsenal in Metz (5 December); a North American recital tour taking in the Rotary Center for the Arts, Kelowna (Canada), Tanglewood Music Center, the Menil Collection, Houston, and the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, La Jolla (30 October, 1, 3/4, and 16 November).
Raphaël Feuillâtre was born in 1996 in Djibouti, on the northeastern coast of Africa, and raised in the small city of Cholet in western France. Although his parents were not musicians, they recognised and encouraged the boy’s clear gift for music after he was given a plastic guitar at the age of seven.
Two years later, Raphaël enrolled at the Cholet Conservatoire, where he received his first guitar lessons from Hacène Addadi. The learning process continued during his high-school years in Nantes, where he received invaluable lessons from Michel Grizard at the Conservatoire de Nantes. From 2015 to 2020 he pursued advanced studies at the Paris Conservatoire, where his teachers included Roland Dyens and Tristan Manoukian. He also worked for a number of years with Judicaël Perroy, whose mentorship was a huge support as he embarked on his career.
Feuillâtre was tipped as a rising star in Europe when he won the 2017 José Tomás Villa de Petrer International Guitar Competition in Valencia, adding this victory to earlier prize-winning competition performances elsewhere in Spain as well as in France, Portugal and the Czech Republic. His international breakthrough came in 2018 when he won first prize at the prestigious Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) International Concert Artist Competition.
His José Tomás and GFA prizes included recording opportunities and concert tours of Europe, Brazil, Argentina, the US and Canada. His career was given a further boost when he was honoured by being selected as one of French performing rights association ADAMI’s “classical discoveries” of 2021. In 2023, he was ranked second in the table of most listened-to classical artists on Apple Classical.
6/2025