Nayden Andreev

Engineering came first: Nayden Andreev completed his music studies afterwards, at the Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts in Plovdiv, and from the 1970s worked in broadcasting while writing and arranging songs for the leading Bulgarian performers of the day — Lili Ivanova, Vasil Naydenov, Mihail Belchev, Margarita Hranova, Rositsa Kirilova. Born in Sofia in 1945, he counted as an arranger quite as much as a composer: a good deal of what a listener remembers as the sound of a particular song is his, cut to an individual voice and to the changing acoustics of radio, television and the studio. His songs also travelled to Russian singers, Alla Pugacheva and Filipp Kirkorov among them, and he wrote for the theatre and the variety stage. The vocal-symphonic Molenie was performed in Yaroslavl and Moscow in 2009. He died in 2013. He graduated from the higher institute of mining and geology in Sofia in 1969 and from the higher institute of music pedagogy in Plovdiv in 1984, worked as editor and deputy editor-in-chief of the popular music desk of Bulgarian National Television from 1972 to 1992 and as its executive director in 1996–97, was the music director of the variety and satirical theatre in Gabrovo in 1984 and from 1997 a freelance composer, a member of the national council for music from 1999 to 2001 and of the International Slavonic Academy, which elected him professor in 2003; he was born in Sofia on 12 June 1945. The broadcasting post is given differently: the narrative places him at Bulgarian National Television from 1972 to 1992 and as its executive director in 1996-97, the biography at Bulgarian National Radio from 1972 to 1990. He began composing in the 1960s, with the orchestral Dobroudjana and a song to Mihail Belchev's words that won gold at the 1968 World Youth and Students' Festival in Sofia, and took the Golden Orpheus Grand Prix for his complete work in 1995. He led the trio Trik as composer, arranger and conductor at the European television festivals in Knokke in 1986 and in Austria in 1987, and his albums run from My Melodies and Orchestral Pieces to Moon Silhouettes. He owned the Andi studio, worked as a producer, wrote four children's musicals and the oratorio Prayer, issued on CD in 2002, and from 2002 assembled the large-scale Bulgaria's Eternal Songs.