I was born in the tiny seaside town of Sudak, in Crimea, Ukraine, to a Russian mother and Bulgarian father. My parents, who met while studying engineering, were both musicians as well – my father a self-taught pianist and arranger, and my mother a singer. Music was always around me growing up. I remembered practicing my singing and dance moves in front of the mirror at age 5 or 6 with a deodorant bottle for a microphone. Later on, house concerts, hosted by my mother and stepfather in our living room, were an integral part of my teen years.

While everyone was interested to hear my native Bulgarian music, I soon began mixing it with my experimental jazz compositions in my first years at Berklee College of Music, applying the characteristic to the music odd meters, melodic sensibilities and melismatic singing. The fist setting of the band that would become Balkan Tales included Armenian pianist and composer Vardan Ovsepian, Serbian drummer Rastko Rashic and American bassist Edward Perez, all wonderful and most sensitive musicians.

Collaboration is one of my favorite parts of creativity. Over the years I was inspired into cross-cultural work with the likes of Israeli world dance masters Balkan Beat Box, Bulgarian kaval virtuoso Theodosii Spassov, American avant garde sitarist Chris Rael, Lebanese singer Mike Massy, and powerhouse Cuban group Síntesis, to name a few, as well as into interdisciplinary ventures with puppet theater and film production. Today I am also busy writing and recording new songs, including exploration into pop music and spoken word. I tour and perform with Balkan Tales and Bulgarian Voices Trio, teach workshops and am developing an interdisciplinary show, Forbidden Love.