BBC Concert Orchestra To Appoint Dobrinka Tabakova as New Composer in Residence

Radio 3 controller Alan J*Davey will be announcing that the BBC Concert Orchestra has appointed Dobrinka Tabakova as its new composer in residence, succeeding Guy Barker, who has been the associate composer for four years.

Tabakova will work with the orchestra for three years, with her first premiere at Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall for the 2018/19 season.

The BBC Concert Orchestra will premiere three new works commissioned by Radio 3, which Tabakova will participate in as the artistic planner and director.

Dobrinka Tabakova is a composer of 'exciting, deeply moving' music (Washington Times), with 'glowing tonal harmonies and grand, sweeping gestures [which] convey a huge emotional depth' (The Strad). She has been commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society, BBC Radio 3 and Britten Sinfonia. Her debut profile album 'String Paths', on ECM Records, was nominated for a Grammy in 2014.

The music of Dobrinka Tabakova has featured in films (Jean-Luc Godard's 'Adieu au langage'), dance (Sydney Dance Company/ Rafael Bonachela 'Anima') as well as international music festivals including Schleswig-Holstein, Moscow Homecoming, Three Choirs, UK and Dark Music Days, Iceland. Creative programmers like violist/conductor Maxim Rysanov, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, violinists Gidon Kremer and Janine Jansen as well as Irish DJ John Kelly, Orchestra of the Swan and Sorel Organization have all championed her music over the past decade.

Among prizes for her work are the Jean-Frédéric Perrenoud prize and medal at the 4th Vienna International Music Competition; the prize for an anthem for the Queen's Golden Jubilee, performed at St Paul's Cathedral, the GSMD Lutoslawski Composition Prize and the Adam Prize of King's College London. Her 'Fantasie Homage to Schubert', nominated by the Bulgarian National Radio, was selected at the 2014 International Rostrum of Composers in Helsinki. In 2011 she was awarded first prize and the Sorel Medallion in Choral Composition, New York.

Recent projects include 'Immortal Shakespeare'- a cantata for the Shakespeare 400 anniversary in 2016, bringing together rare J.M.W. Turner sketches of a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon and Shakespeare's timeless words; also 'The High Line' for orchestra inspired by New York's park in the sky and the UK New Music Biennial film collaboration 'PULSE'.

Forthcoming highlights include a long-term residency with Truro Cathedral, making her the first female composer to be commissioned by the cathedral, two portrait concerts in 2017- in Bristol and Antwerp and a residency with the Leipzig MDR Orchestra for the 2017/18 season.

Dobrinka Tabakova was born in the historic town of Plovdiv, Bulgaria in 1980 and for the past 25 years has lived in London. She graduated from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and holds a PhD in composition from King's College, London.