Zefira Valova
Baroque violin
The Bulgarian violinist Zefira Valova is among the leading early music specialists. Her passionate and charismatic performance moves vast audiences. Equally enjoying the work as concertmaster, soloist and leader or chamber musician, she devotes energy also to enlighten the early music repertoire in her native country.
The season 2020/2021 brings her to direct Il Pomo d'oro Orchestra with Franco Fagioli in the USA and Jakub Józef Orliński in Asia and South America, as well as to be part of a European Tour with Joyce DiDonato's “Favorite things”.
Zefira Valova is the founder of the Sofia Baroque Arts Festival (XIVth edition) – a unique annual event dedicated to early music in Bulgaria.
Among her recent CD releases are two albums for Deutsche Grammophon conducting arias by Vinci and Handel with Franco Fagioli; Bach concertos with Shunske Sato, featuring the Concerto BWV 1043 for two violins for Erato, and as concertmaster in Agrippina of Il Pomo d'oro, conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev and Joyce DiDonato in the title role.
She is guest concertmaster and soloist of Helsinki Baroque Orchestra with musical director Aapo Hakkinen. She has been concertmaster of the European Union Baroque Orchestra and Les Ambassadeurs having worked with Mortensen, Koopman, Onofri and others.
In 2017 Valova has been awarded “Musician of the year” for “artistic activity” by the Bulgarian National Radio. She led the Sofia Philharmonic orchestra in various programs with 18th century repertoire between 2016 – 2019.
Zefira Valova plays a violin by Carcassi from 1760, kindly provided by Jumpstart JR.