THE FESTIVAL
How we started?
Once, while having diner with my parents, they suddenly asked me to organize a percussion festival together. I first thought it was a joke (my dad loves to have fun). I was already living and studying in Paris. They wanted me to invite my new musical friends - a desire to build a transparent bridge between us, my childhood and my new world, since I left Bulgaria.
To make things clear, it is important to know that my dad's 39 years of percussion class in Pleven has produced many great percussionists. My mom is also an important part of the story because she constantly arranges classical pieces for the percussion ensemble Accent where the students of the class play for several years.
Every student of this class has played in Accent and it is one of our first experience as young musicians. But more then this, it was kind of a second family - we grew up together.
When I say "us", I would like to mention the people of my time who played in Accent: Orlin Guergov, Nevyan Lenkov, Nikolai Ivanov, Georgi Varbanov, Svet Stoyanov, Ioana Varbanova, Vladislav Varbanov, Vladimir Petrov, Georgi Trifonov, Nadezhda Rousseva, Georgi Tzvetkov and myself. They are all abroad now, in Germany, US, Spain, France, Great Britain..
In a spontaneous way, my parents wanted to create an event to continue what we have all started together.
Of course, you can imagine that the first edition was a rock n' roll event full of surprises and "oh, yeah, we should have done this like that, or like that...?!" Ok, let's just play and things will be fine!
And things were fine because everybody was invested and gave the maximum to make it happen!
With each next edition we tried to get better, to propose something new to the students and to the audience, to keep the quality of the lessons and the diversity of the artists. And people came from Bulgaria, US, France, Taiwan, Japan, Turkey, Romania, Colombia, Mexico, Sweden...
How can I say... Its simply crazy for me as I have never thought this would continue for so long time! And now we are already preparing the Seventh edition where we will welcome Irena and Tomasz from the Bulgarian-Austrian Lucid Duo and our beloved Pleven growth/Geneva living Bulgarian-Switzerland duo by Nikolay Ivanov and Hristeiya Markova, the outstanding vibe player coming straight from Luxembourg - Pascal Schumacher, « our » boy, the coolest and most groovy Vladi Petrov - principal percussionist in Linz Orchestra, JB Leclère - principal percussionist at Paris National Opéra is a lecturer of our Festival for already 10 years, he will be in Pleven again this summer ; I am happy to teach and play a quiet new project of mine - the UnTraditional Trio with two very inspiring Bulgarian musicians - Dimitar Gorchakov on piano and Hristina Beleva on gadulka...
Of course, I already can't wait anymore. Of Course, we are waiting for you. Of course, it will be great. And we will have fun, promise!