Naji Hakim stands today as a modern exponent of France’s longstanding lineage of organist-composers, and traces of Arab influence surface in portions of his output.
Born in Beirut on October 31, 1955, he grew up in a musical household where both parents encouraged study; he and his three siblings therefore received lessons, with the cello serving as his first instrument. While attending Beirut’s Collège du Sacré-Coeur he encountered a grand French Romantic organ for the first time and was immediately captivated. Public performances began by age 15. Lebanon’s worsening conditions, however, prompted his father to require an engineering degree, a course Hakim continued in Paris once the country’s protracted Civil War rendered return impossible. Residence in the French capital only reinforced his musical ambitions.
An application to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris in 1976 met rejection by a 4–3 admissions vote, leaving him distraught for an entire night; he followed a friend’s counsel nevertheless and began private study with organist Jean Langlais. Those lessons lasted a decade, during which Langlais became an ardent advocate of his pupil’s prospects. Hakim ultimately gained admission and secured seven first prizes in performance and counterpoint disciplines.
He assumed the organist post at Sacré-Coeur, Paris’s 1914 hilltop monument to the Catholic faith, in 1985. In 1993 he advanced to the still more prominent Eglise de la Sainte-Trinité, succeeding Olivier Messiaen. That same year he made his recording debut on the Priory label with the album Naji Hakim: Rhapsody. He remained at Sainte-Trinité until 2008, after which he turned exclusively to composition, producing works not only for organ but also for varied instruments and ensembles, some of them secular.
The Signum Classics label issued Hakim Plays Hakim in 2010, and he has continued to record for the imprint. Performances and commissions have extended well beyond France; the Seattle Concerto of 2000 added to the slender repertory of concertos for organ and orchestra, while Gershwinesca appeared the same year. Arab heritage informs several scores, among them the orchestral Ouverture Libanaise and multiple organ pieces. In 2017 Signum released an album of secular compositions that included a solo cantata setting texts from Racine’s tragedy Phèdre and a recording of the Piano Concerto with Hakim at the keyboard. Soprano Anne Warthmann brought out two volumes of his vocal music in 2023 under the title Anne Warthmann Sings Naji Hakim. By then his own discography surpassed ten albums, and roughly seventy of his works had been recorded.
