ppIANISSIMO JAZZ: NOW
CONCERT OF IMPROVISATIONS
Antoni Donchev
piano (Bulgaria)
Rossen Zahariev – Roko
Trumpet (Bulgaria)
Pavel Terziyski – Clave
Voice (Bulgaria)
The name of Antoni Donchev (b. 1959) can be related
to all the major Bulgarian jazz awards over the last 20 years. His star
appeared on the musical horizon when he founded the prominent Acoustic Version jazz formation, whose
very first performance on the European music stage was awarded the Grand Prix
at the jazz contest in Hoeilaart (Belgium) in 1985. A year later, Acoustic Version won another even more prestigious award – the jury headed
by world known critics Joachim-Ernst Berendt and Pavel Brodovski gave the Grand
Prix of the International Jazz Federation to Antoni Donchev and Christo Yotsov,
granting them the title “Europe's Young Jazz Artist of 1986”. An exceptionally
fruitful period followed, during which Antoni Donchev and Acoustic Version achieved great success at a number of world famous
jazz festivals like Ost-West in Nuremberg, Jazz Yatra in Bombay and
Delhi, Jazz Jamboree in Warsaw, the Prague
Jazz Festival and the Jazz Fair in Zagreb. They had also gave concerts in
Moscow, Hanover, Roermond, Tbilisi, Thessaloniki, Istanbul and many other
cities.
Alongside
his activities with Acoustic Version,
Antoni Donchev has realised a number of other projects with musicians from
Europe and the USA, among them: Joe Lovano, Kurt Elling, George Garzone,
Kenny Wheeler, Tom Harrell, Tomasz Stańko, Jerry Bergonzi, Tommy Smith,
Vladimir Tarasov, Petras Vyšniauskas, Stéphane Belmondo, Reiner Winterschladen,
Eric Vloeimans, Lars Danielsson, Glen Moore, Christof Lauer, Benjamin Schmid,
Georg Breinschmid and others. He has also performed as a soloist in Bulgaria and
abroad, promoted piano concertos dedicated to him, performed and recorded
together with the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra. He composes
music for cinema and theatre. He has recorded for BMG, Sony Music, Polysound, Kukermusic, Balkantone and other labels. Over the
last few years, his cooperation with stage director Teddy Moskov has been very
fruitful.
So far Antoni Donchev has given
concerts in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark,
Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hong Kong, Hungary, India,
Ireland, Israel, Italy, Korea, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Mexico,
Moldova, Norway, Spain, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia,
Syria, Taiwan, Turkey, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, the
UK and the USA. He has
won many prestigious national and international awards.
He is an exemplary
contemporary musician, easily and skilfully handling the broad variety of forms
when performing and composing. He has no difficulty whatever to combine
the versatility of jazz stylistics with folklore and classical music in all
their aspects.
Rossen Zahariev – Roko was born in Sofia in 1971. He started
playing the piano at the age of six. As a child, he sang for seven years in the
Children’s Choir of the Bulgarian National Radio. Later on, he
took up the trumpet as his main instrument. After graduating from the "Lyubomir
Pipkov" National School of Music with classical trumpet, he was accepted
into the jazz program of the Rotterdam Conservatory, where he studied with Bob
Brookmeyer. In 1995, he continued his education at the Berkeley College of
Music in Boston studying with Hal Crook. In 1998, he moved
to New York City. Becoming part of the jazz scene there, he played and recorded
with jazz
musicians Bob Moses, Abbey Lincoln, Steve Kuhn and
Chris Wood. Subsequently, he continued his work in Sofia.
In Bulgaria, Rossen Zahariev has
collaborated with musicians, such as Antoni Donchev, Beloslava, Zhivko Petrov,
Rumen Toskov, Itzhak Fintzi, Dimitar Karamfilov, Milen Kukosharov and others.
He's participated in the experimental project FlyWeToTheMoon together with Georgi Donchev, Alexander Daniel and
Todor Stoyanov. Their music is a blend of jazz and electronic music. In 2012,
he launched the jazz formation Metaфormoзa
together with Antoni Rikev, Nikolay Danev and Miroslav Ivanov.
Pavel
Terziyski – Clave
is a singer who uses his voice as a musical instrument, which gives him the
freedom to improvise in different genres. He has participated in a number of ensembles,
singing the "music of the moment", as well as compositions in the
bossa nova, swing, blues and other styles. Many people, who have witnessed his
performances, define him as an innovator in certain vocal techniques.
In addition to the Bulgarian
experimental and jazz scenes, he has performed in Germany, Estonia, Austria and
Norway within the Tripple A and Echoo Balkan
Samba projects. In early 2016, he
released his debut album Elements under the stage name Pavel Clave. Currently,
he is working on his new project Clavexperience,
as well as on several joint projects with various jazz musicians.
Pavel Terziyski is a member of
the BigBanda Union of Independent
Musicians and Visual Artists.
