Yanko Marinov

YANKO MARINOV studied organ under Prof. Neva Krasteva and piano with Vanya Popova, Prof. St. Dimitrova and Prof. Margarita Krasteva. As a pianist he received the First Prize at the Dimitar Nenov National Piano Competition (1991). In the summers of 1997, 2002 and 2005 he participated in the organ masterclass of Jean Guillou in Zurich. In the period 1998-2000, he became a Herder fellow, specialised in Greek palaeography at the University of Vienna, studied Byzantine notation with Prof. Gerda Wolfram and studied organ in the class of Prof. Р. Scholz and M. Baidanova. He is the founder of the early music consort Concerto antico, with which he participates in international festivals of early music: Händel-Akademie Karlsruhe, Germany ( 2002, 2003), Festival de musica antiga, Barcelona, Spain (2007, 2008); Festival Oude muziek, Utrecht, The Netherlands (2008, 2009) and The Art of Baroque, Sofia (2007 - 2010). He is the head of the Music of the Spheres project, funded by the Culture Programme of Sofia Municipality (2010 - 2011). He initiated and implemented projects for digitalization and research of ancient music manuscripts and is the author of a number of musicological studies. Since 2002 he has been organist at the Catholic Cathedral of St. Joseph in Sofia. In 2015 in Rome he participated in a masterclass and in a concert with Dame Emma Kirkby, the grand dame of early music performers. In 2015, he was awarded the annual Bulgarian National Radio "Musician of the Year" award for 2014 in the category of active creative activity. His repertoire includes organ works by Bach, Buxtehude, Liszt and Max Reger, works by Baroque masters, Romantic and contemporary composers. As of 2018, he is implementing the Music of the Christian World project. He performs organ and piano concerts in Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Greece, Poland, Cyprus, Ukraine, France, etc. With the support of the National Culture Fund, he is carrying out the project "Colossi: Dobri Hristov, Dimitar Nenov and Pancho Vladigerov - genealogy of the Bulgarian and European tradition in their music" (2020-2021). In 2021 he performed a number of concerts dedicated to the 210th anniversary of Franz Liszt's birth. He developed the integrated keyboard technique pioneered by keyboard virtuosos Liszt, Alkan and Busoni.