Божена Петрова

On 28 October 2015 Bozena Petrova took part in Pop & Rock, a crossover evening mounted in Sofia by the State Opera Rousse, sharing the bill with Preya, Ilona Gerulat, Divna Stancheva and Anton Yovchev. Petrova is a pianist from Ruse, a graduate of the National Academy of Music Pancho Vladigerov in Sofia, where she studied with Yovcho Krushev. She formed a chamber duo with the bass Plamen Beykov in 2006; their programmes include songs by Austrian, German, English, Russian and Bulgarian composers. At the Philharmonic Hall in Ruse she has played in a cycle of the Beethoven violin sonatas with Tamara Lazarova and Gabriel Tato, and she accompanies the State Opera Rousse in its chamber and crossover programmes. A television portrait of her as a pianist was made in 2020. She was born in Ruse into a family of artists and grew up between the stage and the orchestra, sitting down at the piano at five; her schooling ran through the National School of Arts Prof. Vesselin Stoyanov in Ruse and the State Academy of Music in Sofia, in the piano class of Yovcho Krushev, and brought national and international distinctions, among them first and special prizes at the second Albert Roussel International Piano Competition in Sofia. She has been a soloist of the Ruse Philharmonic and has played in Europe and beyond, in Shanghai, in Britain and in Japan, and from 2003 to 2009 travelled with the New York Harlem Theatre's Porgy and Bess. She joined the Ruse Opera orchestra as its pianist in 2002, began teaching at the choral studio of St George the Victorious in 2003, and started working with the Ruse Children's Opera in 2016. She is also known as Bozhena Ivanova.