The 11^th edition of the Summer Art Academy ended recently in Sozopol on the Black Sea. Over twenty days the quaint ancient town brought together 104 participants in nine master classes in music, the fine arts and theatre. The halls were filled with friends and fans and the concerts by the participants that followed were a veritable fiesta for the old town.

Here now is Petya Velikova, founder and organizer of the educational forum with her own impressions of the 11^th edition of the Summer Art Academy in Sozopol:

“Everything that happened in the course of these twenty days was an amazing cultural event. Every one of the concerts was a pearl in the necklace of final events; every concert, exhibition and show shines with a light of its own. We had some new things this year, like the masterclass by Prof. Kevork Mardisoryan who came from the university in Indiana. He brought together many Bulgarian children scattered around the world – in Germany, Austria, many participants from abroad – China, Spain, USA. He had a class of eighteen, nine of them took part in the gala concert. The soloists were incredible. The double bass concert was one of the events that shone with a light of its own. Their lecturer Margarita Kalcheva has such love of music that it is infectious.”

“Another interesting event during the art academy was the acting masterclass by Kasiel Noah Asher who gave her students the freedom to breathe a different kind of life into eternal works by Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams and Euripides – as young people see them. The experiment Kasiel conducted with her students was a wonderful thing – one of a kind and very beautiful. We had lecturers in painting – Julian Messa and Sylvia Ilkova. The children painted in oil on a set theme – man and the sea. The side events included the exhibition by Messa and Stoyan Filipov, an incredible piano concert by Antonina Boneva and Radka Chomakova. The young folk music performers, tutored by Dr. Binka Dobreva, soloist of the Mystery of Bulgarian Voices, were phenomenal, there were even participants from Poland who sang in Bulgarian. The audience was really impressed by Georgi Yovnov from Tsavero, whom nature has endowed with an incredible voice and charisma.”

The audio features the following pieces:

- Arietta by Edvard Grieg, performed by Anatoli Krastev, cello and Yovcho Krushev, piano;
- Cantabile et presto by George Enescu, performed by Georgi Spassov, flute and Svetla Slavcheva, piano;
- Waltz-scherzo by Tchaikovsky, performed by Alexander Sabev, violin, participant in the masterclass of Prof. Kevork Mardisoryan and Marina Capitanova, the recording is from the Bulgarian National Radio audio library;
- Folk songs performed by Georgi Yovnov, participant in Binka Dobreva’s masterclass.

English version: Milena Daynova