LCO Artistic Director & Concertmaster

Vasko was born in Sofia in 1970. By eight, he was already a star prodigy violinist and the star actor in an international awardwinning film. In his teens, he won top prizes in three major international violin competitions (Jacques Thibault; Carl Flesch and Paganini) and embarked on a worldwide solo performing career. Since becoming the youngest and first ever concertmaster at the Royal Opera House, (where his ceiling height photograph by Mario Testino adorns the reception) Vasko has continued to widen his artistic horizons. Aside from the classical arena, he has also enjoyed artistic collaborations in various capacities, not limited to violinplaying, with many musical names from other sectors such as Vanessa-Mae, Ronnie Wood, Sting, Paco Peña, Erasure, to name but a few.

He is Artistic Director/Leader of Laureate an instrumental group made up exclusively of international prizewinning instrumentalists. With Laureate, Vasko recorded the multiplatinum selling ‘Original Four Seasons’ with Vanessa-Mae (who was his student from the age of 11 onwards), ragtime, Paganini and a multi-genre project called Total Immersion which had its launch at the Royal Opera House.

Since becoming Creative Producer of the Royal Opera House, in which position he introduces cross-cultural and multi-media projects to this centuries-old institution, he has also broadened his artistic horizons and is now partly based in China where he is developing new television and theatre projects. Already conversant in English, Bulgarian, Russian and Spanish, he is currently studying Mandarin.

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