Concert by CLAIR-OBSCUR SAXOPHONE QUARTET INA KANCHEVA, voice ANTONI DONCHEV, piano.
PROGRAM:
Kurt Weill, Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim, and others.
🎼 The Quartet
Ticket price - 30 leva. Admission for children under 12 - free. Organizers: Cultural Perspectives Foundation
It is obvious why the four musicians from Berlin call themselves "clair-obscur".
"Clair-obscur" is a Renaissance painting technique in which contrasting light and dark tones are used to symbolise heavenly and earthly elements. It is a visual equivalent of the sounds that the quartet draws from their instruments: on the one hand warm, intense, and clear, and on the other raw, aggressive, and powerful.
These two poles can also be found in the composition of the quartet: two women and two men, musicians in one ensemble, creating a unique musical energy.
The group's main focus is chamber music. With the support of their mentor and teacher, violist of the Artemis String Quartet, Prof. Dr. Friedemann Weigel, Clair-obsur has become a highly sought-after ensemble, performing at venues such as the Berlin Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall in New York, where it played for the first time in 2006.
The ensemble focuses not only on original works written for saxophone quartet, but also significantly expands and enriches its repertoire with unexpected transcriptions and stunning arrangements.
However, Clair-obscur is known not only for its chamber music, but also for its individual, original, and authorial works for musical theater. We often see them on stage performing Camille Saint-Saëns's The Carnival of the Animals together with actor Boris Alinovich. Even more theatrically demanding is their version of Jean Cocteau's ballet "The Wedding of the Eiffel Tower" (Les mariés de la Tour Eiffel), in which the concert turns into a cabaret and the musicians become actors. Here they impress not only with their musical virtuosity, but also with their mimicry, wit, and body language.
In addition, the four members of the quartet can regularly be heard at the Berlin Philharmonic.
Clair-obsur has been recognized for its artistic achievements with awards from competitions such as the ADMC International Competition in Ilzach (2007), Gaudeamus (2007), and the Friends of Jeunnesses Musicales Award (2008).
🎼 Ina Kancheva
She graduated in opera singing from the Prof. Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music in Sofia. She was awarded scholarships for the European Opera Centre, Manchester, the Arena di Verona Foundation, the Accademia Chigiana, and the Plácido Domingo Centre for Excellence – Palau de les Arts. She is a laureate of many prestigious competitions, including Young Musical Talents, Pancho Vladigerov, Montserrat Caballé, Manuel Auzenski, Spiros Argyris, DEBUT, Viotti, As.Li.Co, and others. She was named Musician of the Year in 2002.
From 2002 to 2006, Ina Kancheva was a soloist with the Hanover Opera, and from 2006 to 2011 with the Stuttgart Opera, where she performed the roles of Juliet in "Capulets and Montagues," Mimi in "La Bohème," Violetta in La Traviata, Countess Adele in Il Conte Ory, Lucio Silla in Lucio Silla, Micaela in Carmen, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Pamina in The Magic Flute, and others.
In 2020 and 2021, Ina is working closely with the Berlin Radio National Radio Orchestra, with whom she is making a number of recordings and giving concerts.
She has performed as a soloist at numerous festivals in Bulgaria and abroad: Festival Castell de Peralada (Spain), Amadeus Festival and Flanneries Music Festival (France), Landmarks Summer Festival (USA), Beiteddine Festival, Rossini Opera Festival, Ambronay Barock Festival, Ostrava International Festival, etc., as well as in a number of opera houses in Germany, the Royal Danish Opera, Covent Garden in London, La Scala in Milan, Palau de les Arts in Valencia, Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, etc.
He has worked with internationally renowned conductors such as Sir Colin Davis, Manfred Honeck, Enrique Mazzola, Vladimir Jurowski, Alberto Zedda, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Vasily Petrenko, Cornelius Meister, Julia Jones, Sir Neville Marriner, Jiří Bělohlávek, Konrad Junghennel, and Sébastien Roulin, as well as leading specialists in the field of Baroque music such as René Jacobs, Ottavio Dantone, Fabio Biondi, Stefano Montanari, and others.
🎼
ANTONY DONCHEV, pianist, composer, arranger, conductor
The name Antony Donchev has been associated with all major prestigious Bulgarian jazz awards over the past 20 years. His star rose on the music scene when he co-founded the prominent jazz band Acoustic Version, whose very first appearance on the European music scene was awarded the Grand Prix at the jazz competition in Belgium in 1985. A year later, Acoustic Version received another award, this time even more prestigious: the jury, headed by world-renowned critics Joachim-Ernst Berendt and Pavel Brodowski, awarded Anton Donchev and Hristo Yotsov the Grand Prize of the International Jazz Federation, giving them the title of "Young Jazz Performers of Europe for 1986." An extremely fruitful period followed, during which Antoni Donchev and Acoustic Version achieved great success at a number of world-renowned jazz festivals.
Alongside his work with Acoustic Version, Anton Donchev has also collaborated on a number of other projects with musicians from Europe and the US (Kenny Wheeler, George Garzone, Joe Lovano, Tom Harrell, Kurt Elling, Jerry Bergonzi, Tomasz Stanko, Konrad Herwig, Tommy Smith, Glenn Moore, Vladimir Tarasov, Petras Vishniauskas, Rainer Wintersladen, Stefan Belmondo, Eric Vloemans, Lars Danielsson, Ivo Papazov, Zoltan Lantos, Christoph Lauer, Georg Brainsmid, Benjamin Schmid, the GDR Big Band, and others). He performs as a guest pianist in Bulgaria and abroad; he promotes piano concerts dedicated to him, performed and recorded together with the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra; he composes music for cinema and theater. He has released CDs for BMG, Sony Music, Polysound, Kukermusic, Elenmusic, Balkantone, and others. Over the past few years, his collaboration with director Teddy Moskov has been very fruitful. Moskov's productions of Swan Songs at the Schauspielhaus in Düsseldorf, Macbeth at the Bremer Theater, House No. 13, Blue in Blue, and Cyrano at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg have been highly praised by German critics. He is the director of the Bulgarian National Radio Big Band and a lecturer at South-West University. Antoni Donchev is a brilliant contemporary musician who easily and skilfully handles a wide variety of forms in his performing and composing activities. He has no difficulty combining the diversity of jazz stylistics with folklore and classical music in all their aspects.
External links:
Ehe zu viert: Saxofon-Quartett Clair Obscur im Porträt
clair-obscur play Glass Mishima at Arte Lounge
SEND IN THE CLOWNS - Ina Kancheva & Ludmil Angelov
