Konstantin Wladigeroff

Piano at five, clarinet at nine: Konstantin Wladigeroff, born in Sofia in 1978, went through the Lyubomir Pipkov National Music School with Maria Varbanova for piano and Borislav Yotsov for clarinet, third in a line of Bulgarian musicians — his grandfather was Pancho Vladigerov, his father the composer and conductor Alexander Vladigerov. He continued on clarinet at the Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music, spent a preparatory year in composition in Vienna, and then read jazz saxophone and jazz piano at the Vienna Conservatoire, studying piano with Oliver Kent, winning first prize at the Fidelio competition in 2002. With his twin brother, the trumpeter Alexander Wladigeroff, he performs as the Wladigeroff Brothers, in programmes that put jazz, Bulgarian traditional material and improvisation in the same set and include their grandfather's Berlin-period pieces. The duo works across Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Portugal, Poland and Slovakia. He has also performed as a musician at the Burgtheater in Vienna. He was born on 17 August 1978, and the year he spent on clarinet at the Academy, 1997 to 1998, was passed in the class of Professor D. Dimitrov; the preparatory composition year in Vienna was 1998 to 1999.