Maximo Diego Pujol's Biography

Máximo Diego Pujol was born in 1957 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He started his musical studies with Alfredo Vicente Gascon, Horacio Ceballos, Liliana Ardissone and later on with Miguel Angel Girollet. He graduated from the Juan Jose Castro Provincial Conservatory in 1957 where he studied harmony and composition under the guidance of Leónidas Arnedo.

Puiol has performed throughout Argentina and at various guitar festivals in Europe and Australia. His guitar compositions have won awards at competitions in Colombia, France and the World Festival in Martinique and in 1989 he was awarded the Argentine Composers’ Union prize as Best Composer of Classical Music.

Pujol’s strongest influence is the Argentine musician and bandoneonist Astor Piazzolla. Like Piazzolla, he uses the tango as a basic style in wonderfully colorful, melodically rich works that make full use of the expressive powers of the guitar. His Tres Piezas Rioplatenses (Three Pieces from the River Plate Region) attempt to summarize, as an integral work, the three great musical genres that emerge from the River Plate Basin: the tango, the “milonga” and the “candombe”. Written in the style of a little suite, the three pieces are linked to each other through a common melodic element. Usually there is no differentiation between the genres and the term "tango" is used for all forms of musical expression from the River Plate Basin.

The tango, however, properly so called, is clearly urban and moderate in tempo; the milonga, of rural origin, is noted for its contemplative and somewhat melancholy character, and the candombe, stemming from Africa, for its rhythmic richness, and above all for the abundant syncopations, ostinatos and displaced accents.

Mazim Diego Pujol is one of the most important Latin American guitar composers of the 20th century. His works are often performed by world renowned musicians and guitarists such as Kaori Muraji, Ricardo Cobo, William Kanengiser, Victor Villadangos, Graham Anthony Devine just to name a few.

Diego Pujol currently resides in Buenos Aires composing and teaching.