Conductor and composer LYUBOMIR DENEV Jr (b. 1988) is the first winner of the Stefan Linev Young Conductor Award, bestowed by the International Music Festival Sofia Music Weeks and the Euro Atlantic Art Foundation (2021). In the same year he was one of the 20 conductors selected and a semi-finalist of the competition of the University of the Arts in Berlin (Universität der Künste), where he conducted the Berliner Symphoniker. In 2019, he won third prize at a conducting competition in Los Angeles and first prize at the 7/8 New Works Competition in Sofia with his Balkan Suite.
Since 2010, Mr. Denev has been the chief conductor of the Pioneer Philharmonic Orchestra, with which he has performed at festivals in Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, Nis, Edirne, Thessaloniki, Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna. Denev has toured in China and the UAE. In 2014 he participated in the creation of the Balkan Youth Symphony Orchestra. He has given concerts with Lisa Gerrard, Svetlin Roussev, Sava Stoyanov, Kaludi Kaludov, Mariana Tsvetkova.
In 2012. Denev Jr. founded the record company Four For Music together with Georgi Strezov, Georgi Elenkov and Boris Radilov. He has founded and conducted the Sofia Session Orchestra between 2012 and 2019. He performs and records applied music with scores by Alan Silvestri, Ennio Morricone, Harry and Rupert Gregson-Williams, Brian Tyler, Thomas Bergersen, Mario Grigorov, George Strezov, Penka Kouneva, as well as music for the British TV show The Crown and the LEGO video games.
He has been a guest conductor of most Bulgarian orchestras, including the Sofia Philharmonic, the National Radio Symphony Orchestra, the New Symphony Orchestra, the Ruse State Opera, the orchestras of Pazardzhik, Vratsa, Vidin, etc.
As a composer, Denev Jr. has written concert and film music, orchestrations and arrangements performed by Bulgarian and foreign orchestras: the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Sorbonne in Paris, the Sofia Session Orchestra for FPM Music UK, by American performers at the University of Miami and on FOX television. Since 2020 he has been orchestrating for the London Musical Theatre Orchestra. In 2019 the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra performed his music at the French Cathedral in Berlin.
Lyubomir Denev Jr. is a graduate of the Lyubomir Pipkov National School of Music, where he completed his piano studies with Ivan Drenikov in 2007. Later he studied opera and symphonic conducting at the Prof. Pancho Vladigerov Music Academy ” under Plamen Djourov and Deyan Pavlov He studied orchestration with Alexander Tekeliev. In 2012 he graduated with a master’s degree, and in 2017 he got a PhD for his work “Conducting problems in the symphony orchestra recording session”. He has also studied with distinguished teachers and conductors such as Prof. Colin Metters, Dr. Scott Wise, Neil Thomson, Martin Akerwall, and Jin Wang.