Roumen Boyadjieff Jr. is a composer with diverse creative interests. He is the author of the music for dozens of animated, feature and documentary films. He is author of concertos for various instruments and symphony orchestra, chamber music, children's operetta "The Little Match Girl", as well as a number of titles from the repertoire of famous Bulgarian pop singers. He has received awards as a performer and composer, but about a month ago he received his biggest award so far in the first edition of the Next Generation Composers Laboratory. The jury was chaired by famous film composer Harry David Gregson-Williams, and the work that brought Roumen the first prize was the overture to the children's opera The Snow Queen. The work will be performed for the first time in Moscow this autumn by a Russian orchestra at the award ceremony for the winners of the competition.

Who is the man who has built this impressive career step by step? What is the main idea uniting this creative diversity?

"This is an idea that is becoming less visible these days. This is the aim to create real art that reaches directly to the audience and carries a message, coded information about what kind of people we should be, what our society should be, how we can learn to live together and to love each other. This is the power of art - to change people for the better, to provoke them to make the right decisions. I try to speak through my music, to show that everything that is happening at the moment is a huge absurdity and that it is not right to live this way both according to God's and natural laws. We must return to ourselves, to our souls. My goals will always remain the same, no matter how naive this may sound these days.”

Everyone in Roumen’s family with the exception of his father is connected with music and media. One of his grandfathers was one of the first presenters in BNR and BNT, while the other was a famous accordionist. His mother Daniela Kuzmanova is a musicologist, lyricist, organizer of music events, his grandmother - a vocal pedagogue. "They are all my teachers. I also met great people at the School of Music and the National Music Academy,” Roumen says.

"I had the pleasure to be a student of Prof. Dobri Paliev, founder of the Bulgarian percussion school and also to be a student of the great Bulgarian composer Prof. Alexander Raichev. I have been a drummer in the orchestra of the Musical Theater for 20 years. I chose this place because I like musical and performing arts, as well as the atmosphere of this theater. When playing in an orchestra, I learn a lot about the possibilities the instruments provide. I don't look at the magic from aside, I'm part of the magic itself and see what the magician is doing to entertain the audience. Music has always been more important to me than the way the author works, but for those who are interested, I can say I work in the old-fashioned way. I write down the notes and then copyists type them into a computer. That way I have a more complete view of the important details."

English: Alexander Markov