ANTONI DONCHEVs 3UP (Bulgaria)
| Antoni Donchev | Piano |
| Rossen Zahariev | Trumpet |
| Pavel Terziiski | Vocals |
Brass Jazz Music between Balkan Wedding, Sun Ra Arkestra and Chamber Jazz. His compositions are like imaginary landscapes – chamber music atmospheres. Antoni Donchev is looking for the space between the spaces – the microcosmos of sounds.
This new project of Anton Donchev is more lyrical and in the same time open and experimental to the sound. A kind of Supertrio
Antoni Donchev is a pianist and composer whose name has been connected with all the major prestigious Bulgarian jazz awards over the last fifteen years.
He really began his career when he founded the “Acoustic Version” jazz formation. Its first performance on a European music stage was awarded the Grand Prix at the Hoeilaart Jazz Contest in Belgium in 1985.
A year later, “Acoustic Version” won another award: the jury headed by Joachim-Ernst Berendt and Pavel Brodowski gave the Grand Prix of the International Jazz Federation to Antony Donchev and Christov Yotsov, and the ‘Europe’s Young Jazz Artist of 1986’ title.
The following years, “Acoustic Version” performed at numerous world famous jazz festivals like Ost-West, Nurnberg – Jazz Jamboree, Warsow – Jazz Yatra, Bombay and Delhi – Prague Jazz Festival – Jazz Fair in Zagreb, Moscow, Tbilissi, Roermond, Thessaloniki, Istanbul…
Alongside with his activities within “Acoustic Version”, Antoni Donchev realizes a number of other projects with musicians from all over Europe; performs as a visiting pianist home and abroad; promotes piano concertos, dedicated to him, performed and recorded together with the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra; composes music for films and theatre.
Since a few years, he has been working writing music for stage director Stefan Moskov. Moskov’s staging of ‘Swang Songs’ in Schauspielhaus in Dusseldorf, ‘Macbu’ in Bremer Theatre, ‘Home No.13’ and ‘Blue in blue’ in Thalia Theatre in Hamburg were very well received by the German critics.
2000 he release an album with some of his compositions for the theater, that will be called “Home No.13”.
Antony Donchev is a musician, who can easily and skillfully handle the brood variety of forms in performing and composing at the end of the 20th century. He has no difficulty whatever combining the versality of jazz stylistics with floklore and classical music in all their aspects. He participates to the recording of the album “Baroque & Jazz” [PolySound inc.], with the reknown flutist, Simeon Shterev: an album where sonates [from Michel Blavet] meet jazz standards.
He work aslo with: Kenny Wheeler, Tomasz Stanko, Eric Vloeimans, Glen Moore Lars Danielsson, Mihaly Dresch, Kornel Horvath, Zoltan Lantos, George Garzone, Rainer Winterschladen, Klaus Kugel, Georg Breinschmid, Floros Floridis, Ivo Papasov, Andrew Scofield, Tomi Smith etc. etc.
From 2010 the Bulgarian National Big Band Band is under the guidance by Antoni Donchev. For the past 8 years, Antoni has organized with the BNR Big Band a large number of projects with world stars such as Randy Brecker, Kurt Elling, Joe Lovano, Jerry Bergonzi, David Linx, Erik Truffaz and many others.
Rossen Zahariev starts to play piano at 7 and trumpet when he is 10. After graduating from the Sofia School of Music in 1990, he is admitted at the Bulgarian State Conservatory, and two years later he moves to the Rotterdam Conservatory, studying jazz performance with Bob Brookmeyer. From 1995 to 1988 he lives in Boston, attending the Berklee College of Music. He has constantly played with Bob Moses’ band and featured in his last album Nishoma (with Abbey Lincoln, Steve Kuhn, Chris Wood, Jaqcues Schwarz-Bart). At present he is living in Sofia where he plays an instrumental role in building a scene for improvising groups, working with musicians, dancers and actors experimenting with free improvisational techniques.
Pavel Terziyski is a unique vocal performing artist whose diverse techniques carry listeners to other lands and deeper levels.
Known for his originality and impressive improvising skills, Pavel has entertained audiences at venues in Germany, U.K.,Austria, Norway, France, South Korea and the Netherlands.
REVIEW
„No-one has lived in house number 13 for a long time. During the day only the wind blows the leaves around the statue in front of the entrance. After dusk, behind the ivy covered facade you can hear strange noises and music ………………. One of the residents of this house is the chicken with red-thread-sewn eye. „I sewed my eye with red thread so as not to erase what I saw: a house with ear muffs, above it an angel’s sigh and a dog with snow flakes on his nose …..“
Verginia Zaharieva
“JSB continues his Guadeloupean Odyssey between (…) “the Antoni Donchev ist schon seit vielen Jahren auf der bulgarischen Jazzszene tätig und zählt in seiner Heimat zu den bekanntesten und besten Jazzmusikern. Hauptsächlich hat er sich mit seinem Trio „Acoustic Version“, eine der wenigen bulgarischen Jazzgruppen, die für eine längere Zeit Bestand hatten, einen Namen gemacht. Die vorliegende CD präsentiert uns eine bis dato kaum dokumentierte Seite seines Schaffens. Sie zeigt den Komponisten Donchev mit fünf seiner Arbeiten für Theater und Film, die aber auch ohne diesen Konnex bestehen und Gültigkeit haben. Die Musik hat kammermusikalischen Charakter. Donchev erweist sich als Meister der Melodie und der effektvollen, aber sparsamen Instrumentierung. Er hat stimmungsvolle, faszinierende musikalische Kleinode geschaffen. Im Mittelpunkt der CD ist die Musik zum Theaterstück „Home No.13“, dessen Songs sich über die ganze CD verteilen und Erinnerungen an Erik Satie aufkommen lassen. Es soll abschließend erwähnt werden, dass auch das geschmackvolle Design der CD-Verpackung, das von Dimiter Panev stammt, außergewöhnlich ist.
Emanuel Wenger / Jazz Live