Borislava Taneva

Borislava Taneva has kept two disciplines in play since her student years in Sofia, where she read piano with Julia and Konstantin Ganev and composition with Parashkev Hadjiev at the Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music, later working with Jacob Lateiner and Vera Gornostaeva. She has taught at the academy since 1989 - as an honorary assistant first and from 1995 on the instrumental faculty - took her doctorate in 2012 and holds a professorship there, together with a term as vice-rector. A scholarship of the Italian foreign ministry took her to Milan in 1999-2000 for advanced work in contemporary music, and from 2000 to 2003 she led a class in the interpretation of contemporary music in Athens. As a player she has given recitals across Europe and as far as Brazil, Israel and Singapore, with new music a constant of her programmes; she was the first in Bulgaria to perform Haydn's complete keyboard sonatas, in a cycle of nine concerts, and has recorded for Bulgarian National Radio and Television and for the Greek ERT-3, Ginastera and Schnittke among the composers. As a composer, a member of the Union of Bulgarian Composers, she writes chiefly chamber and vocal works and music for children, including songs made with the children's vocal group Bonbon, and her piano pieces for beginners are published in London by Musica Ferrum. Her students take prizes at national and international competitions, and she sits regularly on their juries. Born in Sofia on 8 August 1965, she finished the National Music School with a gold medal, taught piano at the New Conservatory of Thessaloniki from 1990 to 1993 and has given concerts in Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Spain, Germany, Lithuania, Israel, France and Macedonia, and beside the piano she composes, having studied composition with Parashkev Hadjiev. Her composing has been recognised with the Grand Prix Exceptionnel at the first Artistes en herbe competition in Luxembourg in 2010 and a second prize at the Edvard Grieg competition in Oslo in 2017, and she received the Golden Quill for contribution to Bulgarian culture in 2014 and, in 2015, the Crystal Lyre of the Union of Musicians and the award for active creative work in Bulgarian National Radio's Musician of the Year competition. Nikolay Evrov was among her piano teachers and the music of her father Alexander Tanev has a place in her programmes; she founded the Swiss-Bulgarian cultural association SBAC in Geneva and has been co-chair of the Pianissimo Foundation since 2016.