Kameliya Todorova

Camellia Todorova is one of the most accomplished vocal performers coming from Bulgaria, as well as one of the leading musicians having developed and popularised the art of jazz in her country. Her mother a classical singer and her father a jazz aficionado, she grew up in a musical family surrounded by the enormous record collection at home. She started singing on stage while pursuing an acting career with director Nikolai Georgiev's experimental theatre group 4+4, and went on to study singing at the National Music Academy in Sofia in 1976, where she met her future mentors and colleagues. Subsequently, she soon began working with some of the most renowned Bulgarian jazz musicians, including Ludmil Georgiev, Simeon Shterev, Mario Stanchev, Theodosii Stojkov and Peter Slavov. Her first major success as a solo artist came with her debut at the 2nd Annual Jazz Review festival in Sofia in 1978, which at the time was one of the leading festivals for improvised music east of the Iron Curtain. Between 1979 and 1983 she recorded a succession of extremely successful records with the Big Band of the Bulgarian National Radio under conductor Vili Kazassian. Performing continuously in a huge variety of settings, she quickly gathered a devoted following. Bringing unprecedented elegance, refined expression and stunning presence to the stage, her art created almost utopian aesthetic pleasures for an audience deprived of all such aspects so essential to great music, yet rendered "decadent" and "late capitalist" by the official doctrine of socialist realism. Given this existential dimension of her music, she acquired a fame of pop star proportions, hardly comparable to the standing of a jazz singer in any democratic society with a pluralistic music culture. With numerous performances at festivals in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Russia, Poland, Slowenia, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Greece, Portugal, India and Malta, her truly unique talent received international recognition too. She has performed together with Stan Getz as well as with Mingus Dynasty at the 1980 Jazz Jatra Festival in Bombay, and with Milcho Leviev, Albert Mangelsdorff and Don Cherry in her native Sofia in 1980. She has also performed on the same bill with the likes of Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Preston and Louie Bellson. A significant moment in Camellia Todorova's career proved to be the 1980 Golden Orpheus Awards, at the time the most prestigious competition for non-classical artists in Eastern Europe, where she went on to win the Grand Prix as well as the Special Critics' Award. Her double success in this competition brought her further acclaim, also way beyond Bulgaria. She has received further awards at festivals in Lublin (1979), Bombay (1980), Warsaw (1980), Bratislava (1981) and Dresden (1982). During the 1980s Camellia Todorova saw a significant further growth of her artistic development and public profile by acting in some of Bulgaria's leading movie productions. In 1981, she played the title role in the movie Tarnovskata tzaritza, which today is considered a classic of Bulgarian cinema and has been re-issued on DVD in several editions. Other films she has played in include Monolog za prasentzeto (1981), directed by Short Film Palme d'Or winner Slav Bakalov), Bon shans, inspektore! (1983) and Priliv na nezhnost (1983). Considering she had received almost no initial support from state television and radio, the subsequent rise to the leading league of Bulgarian and Eastern European artists at a time when performing in a foreign language, not to mention in English, was unprecedented - must be regarded a truly astonishing achievement. Even at such a rank, eventually the limitations imposed on artistic development by the socialist system, and a new love took her to the next stage of her life. After touring Greece in 1983, she did not return to Bulgaria and emigrated to West Germany. Besides founding a family, she was signed by Virgin Records Germany as Camy Todorow, and released two singles: Bursting at the Seams (1985), produced by Roger Taylor of Queen, and her version of Aretha Franklin's classic Chain of Fools (1986). In the beginning of the 1990s things changed for both Eastern Europe and Camellia; the communist system collapsed and so did her marriage. She returned to Bulgaria and released the album 2 Souls in 1 (1992), most of which was still recorded in Germany. In 1994 she released the album Nastroenie (1994), revisiting her key Bulgarian repertoire from the late 1970s and early 1980s. With this album Camellia also returned to her roots and jazz, as well as to the stages on which her style and art had taken shape. Numerous concerts and festival appearances reunited her with her Bulgarian audience. In 1998, the singer participated in the founding of the first, and today's most popular international jazz festival in Bulgaria, Bansko Jazz Festival. She has since been invited to perform every year, presenting a diverse repertoire of original material and jazz standards, accompanied by settings ranging from an intimate trio to a fully fledged big band. Later projects include the albums Pearls (2001), Pleasure (2002) and Feels Like...(2006). Pearls, a voice and piano performance, is accompanied by Zhivko Petrov and dedicated to Billie Holiday. Pleasure includes a collection of her favourite standards, recorded with the Big Band of the Bulgarian National Radio. Feels Like...is a soul music-inspired record comprising of new compositions and soul classics, yet with a future forward production by one of the leading artists of today's electronic music, KiNK. This album also sees the beginning of a new collaboration with her daughter, singer and songwriter Rachel Row. Together with Zhivko Petrov, Rachel wrote the music and lyrics to the songs Do Right and You-Me, and again for her 2007 single, As One. In January 2003, Camellia Todorova celebrated 25 years of her singing career with a major concert at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, broadcasted by national TV. Internationally she sung at concerts and festivals in Lucerne, Moscow, Istanbul, London and the United States among others. Being recognised as one of the leading vocal performers of her country and an inspiration for a new generation of singers and musicians, Camellia Todorova was invited to share her vocal skills and experience with the next generation. Since 2005 she teaches Singing and Vocal Technique at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia. In May 2011 Camellia Todorova received a honorary award for her outstanding contribution to Bulgarian culture by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Bulgaria.