Diana Chausheva - violin and Ivaylo Vassilev -piano
Diana Chausheva is born in 2007 in a musicians’ family. She is studying violin in the National School of Music “L. Pipkov” in Sofia with prof. Blagorodna Taneva, since 2013. She is laureate of many national and international violin competitions: International Music Competition in Nis, Serbia (with the only highest possible score), International Music Competition in Pernik, Bulgaria (2015), Stage4Kids – Hamburg, 2017, “Dobrin Petkov” in Plovdiv, Bulgaria (2017), “Nedyalka Simeonova”, Haskovo, Bulgaria, 2017, “Varban Varbanov”, Burgas, Bulgaria, 2018 – there she performed a piece, especially written for her by prof. S. Dragostinov. She was a soloist of Vratsa Philharmonic when she was only 7 years old. She has a lot of participations, like Sofia’s Administrative Court’s 140th anniversary or local concerts and events. She has participated in masterclasses with Dora Schwarzberg, Leonid Kerbel, Michael Frischenschlager, Moni Simeonov, Dimitar Burov. She has completed the yearly violin performance course for 2017/2018 at Santa Cecilia Academy in Bergamo, Italy with prof. Vernikov and prof. Voloshin. In addition to the violin, she also sings and has been many times laureate of voice competitions like “Silver Yantra”, has been awarded twice a scholarship for Bulgarian Folk singing; she has been twice a finalist on TV show competitions - “Slavy’s Show” and “Bulgaria got talent”. She has also a leading role in a TV movie “Neptune, I plead you!”
Ivaylo Vassilev is born in 2007 in a family of non-musicians. He is studying piano in the National School of Music “L. Pipkov” in Sofia with prof. Emili Kaneva. At the age of 10, he has already an impressive collection of prizes: 2 Grand-Prix, 2 Absolute First, 7 First, 2 Second, 1 Thirds prizes. He has more than 10 special prizes in addition. He is laureate of many Piano competitions, the most significant within them: Anna Artobolevskaya (Moscow, 2017), Astana Piano Passion (2017), De Bach Au Jazz (Athens, 2018), “Ciudad de Leganes” (Madrid, 2018), “Cesar Franck” (Brussels, 2016), Muenchner Klavierpodium (Munich, 2016), “Young Vituosos” (Sofia, 2016), Stage4Kids (Hamburg – 2016 and 2018), “Virtuozi per Musica di Pianoforte” (Usti nad Labem, 2015). He has two first prizes in the Great Composers Competition series in 2017 (“The Music of 19th Century” and “Masters of Piano Sonata”). He wand the Grand Prize in category Piano at the Global online Music Competition “Enkor International Music Competition” for 2017, with the highest score out of all participants in all categories up to 25 years old. He has participated in a musical-theater performance for W. A. Mozart’s Birthday in 2018 in the role of Mozart as a child, where performed early Mozart’s pieces and improvised live in Classical style. He is laureate of the Grand Prize of “D. Berbatov” foundation for 2017 in category “Art, I-IV grade”, being also one of the 3 finalists for 2016. Ivaylo has participated in masterclasses with Ludmil Angelov (Bulgaria) – he got a scholarship at NBU with him for 2017/2018, with Aglika Genova and Lyuben Dimitorv (Bulgaria/Germany), Atanas Kurtev (Buglaria), Liliya Boyadzhieva (Bulgaria/France/Greece), Philippe Raskin (Belgium), Natalia Deeva (Russia), Anna Manasarova (Russia), Mamiko Suda (Japan), Michele Bourdoncle (France), Anna Gourari (Germany), Joseph Paratore (USA). He is a regular participant in concerts, festivals, cultural events in Sofia.
In addition to playing the piano, Ivaylo everyday composes and improvises. He has already performances of his own pieces for piano solo, as well as for violin and piano (with Diana).
Performances of Diana and Ivaylo represent the music instruments violin and piano in the Music notebooks for Bulgarian schools for Ist grade, others have been part of TV broadcasts. They both had the musical performance at the Meeting of all EU prime Ministers in Sofia in May 2018. They were also awarded by Bulgarian Minister of Culture with special certificates for cultural achievements in 2018.
They had their first series of concerts in the spring 2018 with a rich program, presenting solo violin and solo piano works, as well as their first chamber performances of Dvorak’s Sonatine and a piece composed by Ivaylo.
