Dr. Maurice Kouguell (1930-2008)

Maurice Kouguell was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1930, the son of Arkadie and Marie, Russian child prodigy pianists. Arkadie was the founder and director of the music department of the American University in Beirut. He attended the American University of Beirut before immigrating in the late 1940s to France where he attended the Sorbonne in Paris and completed pre-med studies, and received his master's in performance at the Ecole Normale de Musique. After an outstanding career as a solo violist, he recorded on several European labels and was principal violist in European and American orchestras.

He then combined a broad academic background in education, psychology, hypnotherapy, counseling and family life. He completed doctoral and post-doctoral work at Teachers College, Columbia University, and received his doctorate in clinical hypnotherapy, as well as a Ph.D in counseling psychology. He worked as a school psychologist in the Baldwin, N.Y., schools for 26 years and in private practice until the end of 2007.

Maurice was an avid chamber music player, both in the New York area and in Exeter, where he moved in 2002. Dr. Kouguell passed in 2008 after a long battle with colon cancer, a process he documented and shared in a series of articles he made available to the general public via the Brookside Center website.