Biography
José Luis García Asensio (20 January 1944 – 11 August 2011) was a Spanish violinist, conductor and music pedagogue who developed his career in the United Kingdom.
A member of a family of musicians, at the age of six he began his violin studies under the guidance of his father, who was his teacher until 1960, the year in which he won the Sarasate Extraordinary Prize. A year later, after his stay at the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied under the Spanish violinist Antonio Brosa, he won the Stoutzer Prize.
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In 1966, he was appointed professor of violin virtuosity at the Royal College of Music in London, becoming the youngest professor in the history of the famous school. His musical training was influenced by the conductor Sergiu Celibidache, with whom he performed as a soloist on several occasions, as well as touring stages around the world performing as a soloist alongside conductors of the stature of Daniel Barenboim, Colin Davis, Simon Rattle or his brother, Enrique García Asensio. In 1967 he played in front of the violin section in the recording of "She's Leaving Home", one of the standout songs on the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Married to cellist Joanna Milholland, for more than two decades García Asensio was Concertmaster-Conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra with which he recorded hundreds of albums, including Mozart's concertos for violin and orchestra and his two versions of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, the last conducted by Leonard Slatkin. In 1996 he made his debut as a conductor and soloist with the Detroit Symphony, and over the next three years he performed major concert series with the Washington National Orchestra. He also worked frequently in Japan, with the Israel Chamber Orchestra and with various orchestras in Spain.
Since 1992 he has been a member of the academic faculty of the Reina Sofía School of Music, either as principal conductor of the Chamber Orchestra or as professor of the Violin Chair.
He died August 11, 2011 in London aged 67.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.