Vassil Kazandjiev

Vassil Kazandjiev started his career in conducting at the National Opera in Sofia, where he worked for seven years. During that period he staged and conducted a number of Bulgarian and foreign operas and ballets: Yana’s Nine Brothers and Antigona 43 by Lyubomir Pipkov, Sly Peter by Vesselin Stoyanov, The Boyana Master by Konstantin Iliev, Othello by Verdi, Turandot by Puccini, The Magic Flute by Mozart, Sleeping Beauty by Tchaikovsky, The Wooden Prince by Bartok and many more. In 1962 he founded the Sofia Soloists Chamber Ensemble with which he had very successful concerts in Bulgaria and abroad for 15 years. Since 1978 he was appointed conductor, and from 1985 until 1993 – Chief Conductor of the Bulgarian National Radio.

After his graduation from the State Academy in Music in 1957 in the classes of composition of Pancho Vladigerov and conducting of Vladi Simeonov, Kazandjiev is active as conductor at the Sofia Opera, and since 1962 to 1978 as founder and director of the Sofia Soloists Chamber Ensemble, as well as director of the Symphony Orchestra of the Bulgarian National Radio (1979–1993). Since 1985 he is professor in conducting at the National Academy of Music (Bulgaria) and since 2009 he is elected Academician in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

Vassil Kazandjiev or Vasil Ivanov Kazandzhiev (Bulgarian: Васил Иванов Казанджиев [vɐˈsiɫ kɐzɐnˈd͡ʒiɛf]; born September 10, 1934) is a Bulgarian composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal, film and piano music. His work is representative of the 20th-century classical music and 21st-century classical music.

Vassil Kazandjiev was born in 1934 in Rousse, Bulgaria. At the age of 7 he started playing the guitar and two years later he learned to play the piano. At the age of 10 he started composing music. His first teachers of composition and conducting were Konstantin Iliev and Dobrin Petkov. In 1957 Kazandjiev graduated from the Bulgarian State Music Academy in the composition class of Professor Pancho Vladigerov and conducting with Professor Vladi Simeonov. Already as a student at the Academy, he won a laureate’s prize for his Symphonietta for a large orchestra at the Sixth International Youth Festival in Moscow (1957 – chairman of the jury Dm. Shostakovich).