Bulgara

Bulgara is a Bulgarian instrumental group formed in 2002 around kaval player Kostadin Genchev and drummer Kiril Dobrev. Its music places folk instruments and Bulgarian melodic material within arrangements drawing on funk, drum and bass, rock and jazz. The group has worked in concert, festival and theatre settings; its music for Divite, based on Nikolay Haytov, received an Askeer award. Bulgara has also appeared with jazz pianist Milcho Leviev at Bulgaria Hall, extending its folk-based language into collaborative concert projects. Bulgara came onto the stage of the National Palace of Culture on 24 May 2009, in the gala for the Day of Bulgarian Enlightenment and Culture, to play Mecha svatba. The group sat inside an evening that ran from Vladigerov's Vardar Rhapsody and Zlatev-Cherkin's Sevdana to Dinicu's Horo Staccato, with Radostina Nikolaeva, Elitsa Todorova, Stoyan Yankoulov and the clarinettist Ivo Papazov among the soloists.