Nikolay Sapundjiev

Nikolay Sapundjiev was born on 30 June 1977 in Plovdiv and began the violin at six. He finished the Dobrin Petkov school of music there in 1996, in the class of Elena Koinova, and went on to the academy in Sofia. A laureate of the Svetoslav Obretenov national competition in 1986, he received a grant from the Music and Youth foundation in 1994 and took part in the masterclasses of Mincho Minchev and Dora Ivanova. He has played with the Plovdiv Philharmonic, the symphony orchestra of Kardzhali and the Youth Orchestra Plovdiv, in whose formative seasons he took solo parts - among them one of the two violins in Bach's D minor concerto - and he belongs to the chamber ensembles Plovdiv and Collegium Musicum Plovdiv. He has given concerts in Bulgaria, Austria, Germany, Norway and Belgium.