John Ferguson

John Ferguson currently resides in Bangkok, Thailand where he carries out his dual roles as pianist and Executive Director of American Voices. His performing and artistic direction activities include over one hundred concerts, academies, workshops, broadcasts and masterclasses per year throughout Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

John Ferguson first studied music at the High School for the Performing Arts in his hometown of Houston, Texas and completed his studies at the University of Texas at Austin where he received his Master’s Diploma. Additional studies took him to Paris where he was a student of Nadia Boulanger and to Geneva where he studied with Maroussia le Marc’hadour.His piano teachers have included Danielle Martin, Eugene List and Edith Lateiner-Grosz.

In 1993, John Ferguson founded American Voices to fulfill the need for quality, constructive American cultural programming in the newly independent nations of central and eastern Europe. Since then, the focus of American Voices has expanded to include any country where a scarcity of exposure to American culture exists with a focus on nations emerging from conflict or isolation.

In Europe he has appeared in prestigious venues such as Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Théatre de la Ville and Radio France in Paris, and Bonn’s Kunst- und Austellungshalle. Festival appearances include the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation’s ‚Flaneries de Reims‛, Germany’s ‚Altmark Musikfest‛ , ‚A(r)tlantische Tage‛ and ‚American Music Week-Bonn‛. Radio and television broadcasts have reached millions in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Lebanon, Azerbaijan, Germany, France, and India to name only a few.

In the Middle East and Asia, he has founded the innovative summer youth performing arts academy program, Youth Excellence on Stage, YES Academy in Iraq (since 2007), Lebanon (since 2009), Thailand (since 2009) and Syria (since 2010). The YES Academy has been featured on ABC Nightly News in the United States and viewed by millions in local broadcasts in Iraq and the region.

John Ferguson’s recordings include ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ with the Junge Philharmonie Thüringen and ‘Saxofolies’ for EPM. He has been producer and artistic director for several recordings on the American Voices label; ‘Jazz Bridges Afghanistan’, ‘American Voices Around the World’, ‘Jazz Bridges Burma’ and ‘Jazz Mugham Bridges Azerbaijan’.