Lilyana Kehayova

As soloist and as chamber player, the Bulgarian cellist Lilyana Kehayova has worked in Sofia and with Camerata Orphica NBU, with whom she appeared in 2015; the Orpheus in Wien festival took her to Vienna in 2019, and in 2023 she played Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B minor with the Vratsa Symphony Orchestra. Her programmes range from contemporary Bulgarian music to the central concerto repertoire. She trained at the Lyubomir Pipkov National School of Music with Anna Atanasova and took her degrees at the Vienna Conservatory with Lilia Schulz-Bayrova, winning Concertino Prague in 2006 and the conservatory's Fidelio competition in 2013. She teaches cello at the New Bulgarian University, plays in the Paganini Ensemble Vienna and became general secretary of the Orpheus international music academy there in 2014. In 2017 she and Schulz-Bayrova gave the first performance of Gheorghi Arnaoudov's concerto for two cellos Antiphonia Dulcis Armonia, written for them, at Sofia Music Weeks, and a year later she played Goleminov's First Cello Concerto with the Sofia Philharmonic under Mark Kadin.