THE GREAT VOICES OF BULGARIA is a women’s choir of professional singers that has existed for more than 40 years. Sustaining the voice in the throat by using their neck muscles, instead of the diaphragm, this vocal technique is completely natural to them and century’s old. Since1980’s, under the direction of Zdravko Mihaylov, their repertoire was expanded to include arrangements of traditional Bulgarian music composed with modern harmony and polyphony by authors such as Philip Koutev, Krassimir Kyurkchiysky, Stefan Dragostinov, Peter Liondev and Stefan Moutafchiev to name a few.

Soloists of ensemble during the years have been Nadka Karadjova, Liliana Galevska, Kalinka Valcheva, Elena Bozhkova, Olga Borisova, Kremena Stancheva, Anastasia Kostova, Vasilka Andonova, Nadejda Chwoineva, Stoyanka Boneva, Stoyana Lalova, Yanka Taneva, Hristina Lutova, Tsvetanka Varimezova, and Zlatina Ouzounova. Thus creating the best possible collection of folklore voices and songs and thanks to Mihaylov’s abilities, the choir gained international fame and won the Grand Prix de Disque at MIDEM, France.

Since 1999, Ilia Mihaylov became the Music Director of the The Great Voices of Bulgaria. Together they have been immensely successful realising versatile projects with extraordinary artist such as the Bulgarian kaval virtuoso Theodosii Spassov, the Hollywood composer Michel Colombier, the jazz pianist François Raulin and his trio, the contemporary visual artists Missirkov/Bogdanov, the Hungarian organist László Fassang and his traditional flutes and bagpipe counterpart Balázs Dongó Szokolay, among other.

The choir have appeared to a critical acclaim in over 20 countries in Europe, Asia and North America at many of the world's great festivals. Master classes for the Harvard University, Paris University 8, and the Conservatory of Strasbourg are regular part of their educational programs.

In the past, the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs selected Mr. Mihaylov and the choir to produce two albums, which were to become the country’s official gift for the occasion of its joining the European Union. In 2005, Valery Gergiev invited The Great Voices of Bulgaria at the Moscow Easter Festival, and they performed concerts in the Kremlin, Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, and St. Peter’s Monastery. In the same year the choir toured Canada and established a box office record, as one of their concerts sold 10 000 tickets. In 2019, they went to Chengdu, China at UNESCO 7’Th International Festival of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.

BBC Radio 3 recorded the Great Voices of Bulgaria on a program, and the French music channel MEZZO TV featured them on a documentary, which was included in the prestigious series The Choirs of Europe.

The friendship connecting the composer Yavor Rоussinoff - a doyen in the blending of electronic music and Bulgarian folklore - with the conductor Ilia Mihaylov quite naturally sublimated the idea of creating a joint album with the choir of the "The Great Voices of Bulgaria", on which the creative process began in 2018. For it, well-known performers such as Vesko Eshkenazi (violin), Teodosii Spasov (kaval), Vasil Mihaylov (actor), with whom Rоussinoff and Mihaylov have been working over the years, have been involved.

The solo vocals are entrusted to Desislava Petrova, Veselka Stamboliyeva and Krasimira Stoyanova - singers from the choir "The Great Voices of Bulgaria", who not only interpret songs from different folklore regions, but also actively participate in the musical interaction. The album "Yana" includes songs such as "Temen Gyuro", "Katerino Mome", "Kozhillo", "Stani momice", as well as the iconic song about Captain Petko Voyvoda, recorded in an updated version and original arrangement by Roussinoff. Krassimir Kyurkchiyski is the only other composer present in the project with his choral score "Rofinka", remixed by Yavor, representing with its new sound a dialogue between these two generations of composers.

The quality of the recording and the unique atmosphere of the creative process that can be felt through, and it is undoubtedly due to Roussinoff's studio (where the solo part of the recordings was made, the choral ones were recorded in Studio 5 of Sofia University) located in a 150 year old stone and wood house in the southeastern Rhodopes.

The premiere of Jana, although delayed due to objective circumstances (including the COVID -19 crisis), finally took place in November 2023 with the kind support of MUSICAUTOR and is available on all major digital platforms as well as on CD. As a worthy representative of contemporary Bulgarian musical culture, it has the ambition to be presented in the near future "live" through a large-scale audio-visual performance, both in Bulgaria and abroad.

The trio of the French jazz pianist and composer François Raulin and "The Great Voices of Bulgaria" choir, conducted by Ilia Mihaylov, have been working together since 2007. Together they created the cinema-concert La Belle Nivernaise, which has been presented with success at a number of festivals in Italy, France and Bulgaria. The friendly relationship established between the French musicians and the Bulgarian choir gradually shaped the idea of a new musical production, not limited by the parameters of accompanying a silent cinema. Gradually, during their visits to Bulgaria, the saxophonist Christophe Monniot and the pianist François Roulin presented their own compositions to Ilia Mihaylov, and with his help adapted and arranged them to fit the vocal range, technical and aesthetic possibilities of "The Great Voices of Bulgaria". Especially for this "adventure" the double bassist Claude Tchamtchian was involved.

The repertoire includes:

- French chansonnes - Piaf's La foule and Aznavour's Emmenez-moi;

- American jazz standards - "I Child is Born" and "Somethimes I fell like a motherless child";

- French arrangements of famous Bulgarian folk songs such as "Temnei Goro", "Vecheryai Rado", "Dilmano, dilbero";

- "jazzed" interpretations of works by Bulgarian authors such as "Dilmano, Dilbero" by Kurkchiyski and "Velikden Ide" by Dragastinov.

- Original compositions by the members of the trio.

In summary, this entirely new musical material in which French and Bulgarian musical influences intertwine develops the idea of aesthetically interpenetrating and complementing these seemingly distant musical cultures. Giving a new identity to the respective musical heritages the project, ,,NEW ROOTS" was born. It premiered at the Détours de Babeles festival in Grenoble, France in March 2023 to great acclaim.

Here's what the French press wrote about him:

,,The charm worked from the start. The strong, delicate, clear, low, powerful voices were in complete symbiosis with the instruments, which were sometimes a fifteenth voice. It was a pleasure to listen to French chansons revisited by our [French] jazz trio, which also arranged traditional Bulgarian pieces, each of the musician-composers bringing his own specificity - either jazz, French chansonnes or his taste for Eastern music. This crossing of musical roots (or rather influences) delighted the very enthusiastic audience. Long live this unique and exceptional creation - New Roots - a joyous, warm and colourful musical production."

(Jazz Rona Alps)

The Sound of Byzantium is a musicological research project whose main goal is to present the European musical roots of Bulgaria trough the Slavic - Byzantine ecclesiastical musical tradition. The aim is to lift the veil of the Byzantine world – a sui generis prototype of the European Union with his heart in Constantinople, his body in the Slavic countries - Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia and Russia in which the Orthodox Christianity is the principle structurally founding element. The dearest infant of this world is the civilization called Byzantine, which is one of the two faces of Europe and constructs the inseparable historical heritage of our continent.

Nowadays, Orthodox music has been undeservedly marginalized, while in Western Europe, ecclesiastical music is increasingly heard from recordings and concert performances. It is necessary to bring the achievements of the theoretical research on Eastern music to the knowledge of the society in a captivating and modern fashion.

Systematizing and recovering works dating from 10th–19th century, transcribed from old sources, manuscripts, and collected from various monasteries, archives, and funds, the chants are studied and performed by contemporary church singers with theological education. The project will summarize the liturgical music, used in the Balkan Peninsula, music that have influenced the development of Western European culture for more than a millennium.

In 2018, Ilia Mihaylov and his Ensemble for Byzantine music Sofia Psaltes recorded and published some of the studied material on CD, accompanied by explanatory texts in luxurious bilingual (BG, EN) book edition.