Composer Yuri Stupel celebrates 60th birthday

published on 12/27/13 12:30 PM

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Yuri Stupel was born in December 1953. He is the son of respected composer Petar Stupel. His mother Lidia is an opera singer, renowned for her chamber performances. Here is what the composer said about his first contact with music.
“Even before I was born I was in a constant contact with art. I remember that when I was 4 I was already visiting the performances in which my mother sang. At home the piano was playing non-stop. When I became 6 years old, I started taking piano lessons and I even tried composing. I used to watch my father and was fascinated.”
Yuri Stupel has graduated from the Academy for Music and Dance Art in Plovdiv. During the 70s he and his friends Haygashot Agasyan, Kristian Boyadzhiev and Georgi Denkov created a band called Association. They performed at various festivals across Europe.

Yuri Stupel is mostly known as a composer of theater and film music. He told us more about the song you have just heard:
“When I left the army I wrote this song for a film by Binka Zhelyazkova. The Nestinari band recorded the soundtrack. I have mostly created music for the theatre, though. I have also written 4 ballets. One of them is based on the work The House of Bernarda Alba by Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca.”

One of the other ballets by composer Yuri Stupel focuses on the war in former Yugoslavia. The author also has written a ballet for children based on a fairy tale by Oscar Wilde.

Yuri Stupel has long been living and working in Greece. “I chose this country, as it is close to Bulgaria and I like the climate, the composer says and adds:
“I and my wife went to Greece with the aim at creating a ballet school in Larissa. We were invited by the Mayor. Some 800 children passed through this school and some of them continued to work in the field of music. When the state decides to do something for culture the results can be very good.”

In Greece Yuri Stupel has created about 200 works.
“There were times when I composed 9 pieces each season. I have participated twice in the Epidavrus Festival. The theater there is considered to be the oldest and the biggest in the world and it also has incredible acoustics.”

Yuri Stupel also told us about the projects he currently works on:
“During the winter I am to participate as a pianist in a one-man play dedicated to the life of ballet dancer Isadora Duncan. The play is very well accepted by the audience. My music can also be heard in a number of plays performed in Bulgaria. These are That Thing by Hristo Boichev, The Roman Bath by Stanislav Stratiev, and Bai Ganyo by Georgi Danailov. We performed the last one before Bulgarian emigrants to Cyprus and it was well received.”

English version: Alexander Markov

По публикацията работи: Monika Alexandrova

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Composer Yuri Stupel celebrates 60th birthday

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