Born in Pleven, educated in Bulgaria and France, Vassilena Serafimova has been living in Paris for ten years. While still in Bulgaria she won numerous awards at national and international competitions: in 2003 – the Grand Prix at the Music and Earth International Competition, in 2006 she was a finalist at the International Marimba Competition in Linz, Austria, and won two special prizes. Later that same year she was awarded second prize at the International Marimba Competition in Paris as well as the award of SPEDIDAM – the French Performing Artists Rights Management Association - for best foreign student in France. In 2007 she won second prize at the ARD International Competition in Munich, Germany and a year later – first prize at the Fifth World Marimba Competition in Stuttgart, Germany.

In April Deutsche Grammophon is releasing a CD which Vassilena Serafimova recorded with pianist Thomas Enhco. From her we find out more about the music included in the album, about the Bulgarian music in her repertoire, but also – about the mallets with her name on them and that have become all the rage in France.

“The idea for the duo actually belongs to his first piano teacher Gisèle Magnan, director and founder of Les Concerts de Poche, a very important artistic organization in France. She wanted us to perform together and organized a concert for us in 2009, one of the most amazing music rendezvous for the two of us. It is still one of our leading projects. Our album features Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major by Mozart, an arrangement for piano and marimba. We also present Bach’s Adagio and Fugue from Sonata in G Minor with me playing the original and Thomas improvising. It also includes our own compositions as well as improvisations based on the Bulgarian folk song Dilmano, Dilbero and a piece called Signs of Life written especially for us by American composer Patrick Zimmerli. Let me just add that the premiere of this work was in Bulgaria, at the International Marimba and Percussion Festival we organize in my home town, together with the Panayot Pipkov National School of Arts and Pleven municipality. The album can best be described as “multifarious and eclectic”.

Let us add that the album will be presented officially on 3 May in Paris, at the prestigious Théâtre Des Bouffes Du Nord.

“A while back I worked with Eric Sammut, the first marimbist with a marimba class in France,” Vassilena goes on to say. “As of this year I am myself teaching the second marimba class at the Maurice Ravel Conservatoire and that is a major responsibility. I decided to invite Eric and his class to organize a concert together with my own students. Together we shall perform my own transcription of a Bulgarian folk song and we shall improvise. The solo pieces I perform include a work by Tsenko Minkin, as well as an arrangement of another famous folk song – Polegnala e Tudora – by Prof. Dobri Paliev. Together with a jazz and classic quartet we play Kalimanku Denku. I myself have a classic education but Bulgarian folklore is foremost in my repertoire. I have graduated the Panayot Pipkov National School of Arts in Pleven, then in France I studied at the National Conservatoire in Versailles and the Higher School of Music, but folklore has always been part of my life. I adore traditional music and I hope that it is a way to present my country in the best way possible!”

Vassilena’s parents, Avgustina and Simeon Serafimov are musicians and her first teachers:

“At the beginning they were the most important people in my life, as with any child,” she says. “I was in my father’s percussion class for 12 years at the music school. My mother lectured analysis, polyphony. Even the festival in Pleven was my parents’ idea, we are now preparing its fourth edition. In France I met a lot of people who have influenced my own development as a musician and an individual – Sylvio Gualda whose class I was in at Versailles, and many, many others, there’s no way I could mention them all. I met Monica and Dietrich Hermann who manufacture percussion mallets some ten years ago. Monica was really impressed by a performance of mine and said that one day she would do something for me. The idea to have a new line of marimba mallets with my name on them came up a few years ago. We tried out different prototypes until we got the result we wanted. These mallets have been on sale all over France since the end of last year and have been a resounding success. I am happy to say many school and university students now use them. This is a success for the manufacturer but also for me.”

Audio features the following pieces:

- Solo marimba;

- Signs of Life, with Thomas Enhco;

- Dilmano, Dilbero, with Thomas Enhco;

- Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major by Mozart, part 1, with Thomas Enhco.

English version: Milena Daynova