Dobrinka Tabakova
“By the time I've put the last note on the paper, I'm already catching up with myself. Towards the end, there's almost always a spot when you feel as though it's like walking downhill, when it's all coming together. I certainly look forward to that moment when you have perfect clarity and it all makes sense. […] Maybe every composition is about finding that moment again and again.”
Dobrinka Tabakova is a composer of music with “glowing tonal harmonies and grand, sweeping gestures [which] convey a huge emotional depth” (The Strad). Her music has been commissioned and performed by leading musicians and ensembles and her debut profile album on ECM, String Paths, was nominated for a Grammy in 2014. The Washington Times described it as "stunning [...] an original and exciting, deeply moving, and triumphant debut. What’s more, there is something immediate and personal about her music that will prove [...]
“By the time I've put the last note on the paper, I'm already catching up with myself. Towards the end, there's almost always a spot when you feel as though it's like walking downhill, when it's all coming together. I certainly look forward to that moment when you have perfect clarity and it all makes sense. […] Maybe every composition is about finding that moment again and again.”
Dobrinka Tabakova is a composer of music with “glowing tonal harmonies and grand, sweeping gestures [which] convey a huge emotional depth” (The Strad). Her music has been commissioned and performed by leading musicians and ensembles and her debut profile album on ECM, String Paths, was nominated for a Grammy in 2014. The Washington Times described it as "stunning [...] an original and exciting, deeply moving, and triumphant debut. What’s more, there is something immediate and personal about her music that will prove the envy of many of her peers”. Music from the album was used in Jean-Luc Godard’s award winning 2014 film, Adieu au langage.
Born in 1980 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, to a musical family, Tabakova moved to London in 1991, where she has lived since, holding both Bulgarian and British citizenship. Here she studied at Alleyn’s School and the Royal Academy of Music Junior Department. Early on, the composer John Adams praised her music as being “extremely original and rare”. She took a degree in composition studies at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London and, on graduating with distinction, was appointed Composition Fellow at the Guildhall, where she continued her activities as President of the Contemporary Music Society. In 2007 she was awarded a doctorate in composition from King’s College London (KCL).
Notable commissions include three suites and a concerto for violist Maxim Rysanov, Concerto for Cello & Strings for Kristina Blaumane and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Of the Sun Born for Riga Youth Choir Kamer’s large project of World Sun Songs, as well as projects with Janine Jansen, Gidon Kremer, Natalie Clein, Milos Karadaglic, Orchestra of the Swan, Choir of Merton College (Oxford), Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra and Voices of Ascension (New York). 2014 saw the premiere of a Royal Philharmonic Society commission, a joint film and music collaboration with Scottish director Ruth Paxton. The film Pulse was part of the UK’s first New Music Biennial and was screened throughout the UK and across Europe.
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