Zefira Valova
Baroque violin
Zefira Valova has led Il Pomo d’Oro in concerts with countertenors Jakub Józef Orliński and Franco Fagioli, cellist Edgar Moreau, and mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg. She tours in USA and Europe with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato.
Among the recent CD releases are Concerti for violin by Saint-Georges, Benda, Grown, Sirmen with Il Pomo d'oro for Aparte, two albums for Deutsche Gramophon conducting arias by Vinci and Handel with Franco Fagioli; Sonatas by Schubert with Aapo Hakkinen – fortepiano.
She is a guest concertmaster of the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra with musical director Aapo Häkkinen, with a main focus on Romantic repertoire. She has been concertmaster of the European Union Baroque Orchestra, where she worked with Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Ton Koopman and Enrico Onofri, among others. She has performed and recorded concerti by Vivaldi and Telemann as a soloist and concertmaster with Les Ambassadeurs, directed by Alexis Kossenko.
In 2020 she won first prize in the José Herrando Baroque Violin Competition. Valova is the founder of the Sofia Baroque Arts Festival, and in 2017 she received the Musician of the Year prize for artistic activity by Bulgarian National Radio, as well as the Golden Feather award for culture in 2021. She led the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra in programmes of 18th-century concertos between 2016 and 2019.
She graduated at Sofia’s National Academy of Music with Yosif Radionov, and with Lucy van Dael at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam.