Martin Georgiev - Composer & Conductor (Official Site) HOME

NEW - UNIVERSAL EDITION : Sheet Music and Perusal Scores now available (click here for Martin Georgiev's UE page)Martn Georgiev - Composer & Conductor (Official Website)

Album Release: Violin Concerto, Trittico (click here)

Concerto.net: "a mélange of searing and oft-untamed commentaries, to pay tribute to those men and women who have fought and are currently fighting valiantly against this plague."

Album Release: GENESIS, ICSM Records (click here)

Das Orchester 5***** "The CD debut of the young Bulgarian-British musician Martin Georgiev brings us an entirely individual musical narrative world, from London. In it, heaven and earth are reflected." read more...

Limelight **** “a triumph… bold, sophisticated compositional vision executed with brilliance.” read more...

Sound and Vision : “unlike anything else I have heard before”

Fanfare: "Sophisticated, uncompromising yet sonically appealing, the music of British-Bulgarian composer Martin Georgiev (b. 1983) promises to be a prominent voice on the musical landscape. … The recording … is superb. Georgiev is a major new voice"

Pizzicato *** “pictorial and full of fantasy”

Music Web International : “Music with an invitingly gruff and swirling strangeness that trumps and transcends its occasional avant-garde sounds.”

Conducting reviews:

Financial Times*** "zestily played by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia under Martin Georgiev's exuberant baton"

The Times*** "rousing orchestral music from the Royal Ballet Sinfonia under Martin Georgiev's baton"

Martin Georgiev is an internationally awarded British-Bulgarian composer, conductor, percussionist and producer, based in London since 2005. His collaborations as composer and conductor feature The Royal Ballet and Opera, Covent Garden, London, where he is currently Staff Conductor, the Brussels Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Mozart Players, Covent Garden Soloists, Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Heidelberg Philharmonic Orchestra, Sofia National Philharmonic Orchestra, National Orchestra of Belgium, Birmingham Royal Ballet, The Australian Ballet, Netherlands Dance Theatre, Northern Ballet, Orchestra Victoria, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Varna Opera House, Ballet and Symphony Orchestra, Kammerorkest van het Noorden, Azalea, Ukranian Festival Orchestra, Manson Ensemble, Cosmic Voices and Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles amongst many.

He was Composer in Residence to the City of Heidelberg - 'Komponist für Heidelberg 2012|13" which culminated in the world premiere of The Secret, orchestral work commissionned and premiered by the Heidelberg Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the composer, which later grew into becoming Symphonic Triptych No.3, completed in London during the first lockdown of 2020.

He is Staff Conductor for The Royal Ballet at The Royal Ballet and Opera, Covent Garden, London, where he has been assistant conductor since 2013, conducted performances in classical and contemporary productions, such as Swan Lake, Mayerling, Woolf Works, he gave the world premiere of Gemma Bond's Boundless, and was involved with the world premieres of numerous new ballets by world's top choreographers and composers, such as Woolf Works, Multiverse, Connectome, Frankenstein, Yugen, Obsidian Tear, The Illustrated Farewell, Strapless, Corybantic Games, The Wind, Raven Girl, Unknown Soldier, Medusa, The Weathering, and Untitled 2023, collaborating with composers such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Steve Reich, Marc Anthony Turnage, Thomas Ades, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Max Richter amongst many. The 2023-24 Royal Ballet production of Swan Lake that he conducted at the Royal Opera House was broadcast worldwide to over 1300 cinemas in 43 countries. In the new 2024-25 season at The Royal Ballet and Opera he will conduct 36 performances in the productions Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev), Cinderella (Prokofiev) and Allice's Adventures in Wonderland (Talbot). Since 2018 he has been Guest Conductor with the Birmingham Royal Ballet where he conducted the world premiere and UK tour of Ignite (nominated for Benois de la Danse, Moscow, 2019) within the Ballet Now commissioning programme, and he opened and closed the 2019-20 season of the company, conducting the world premiere of A Brief Nostalgia (also a Ballet Now commission) at Birmingham and London's Sadler's Wells in 2019, and Swan Lake at Birmingham and on tour around the UK, including the last show before the first COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020. In the autumn of 2021 he returned to the Birmingham Royal Ballet conducting Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, as well as the premiere of Rosie Kay's new full length ballet Romeo + Juliet choreographed to Berlioz's choral symphony Romeo et Juliette, hailed as 'rousing' by The Times and 'zestily played by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia under Martin Georgiev's exuberant baton' by the Financial Times. In the 2022-23 season he returned to conduct the The Nutcracker, and Swan Lake, including the spotlight performances starring Polina Semionova as guest principal, followed by The Sleeping Beauty in the 2023-24 season. He has also conducted for the Netherlands Dance Theatre (NDT 1) and the Dutch Ballet Orchestra (HBO) giving the world premiere of Marco Goecke's critically acclaimed full length ballet In the Dutch Mountains, choreographed to Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra and Dance Suite, and Brahms' Symphony No. 3, streamed worldwide to international audiences, and for The Australian Ballet in Swan Lake, and Northern Ballet in The Nutcracker and Beauty and the Beast. In the 2024-25 season he is also making a debut with the Balleto dell'Opera di Roma, at the Rome Opera House in Italy, in Le Rouge et le Noir, a full lenth ballet by Uwe Scholtz.

In 2010-11 he was SAM Embedded Composer with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London. He has been a regular guest conductor with the Varna State Opera House for over 15 years, where he conducted a number of award winning productions and concerts, including two critically acclaimed new productions of Swan Lake with laureates of the legendary Varna International Ballet Competition and guest principals from Bolshoi Ballet and other international ballet companies. For season 2020-21 Georgiev was scheduled to conduct several productions with the Royal Ballet at ROH Covent Garden, cancelled due to the pandemic situation in the UK. The global pandemic also cut short the Netherlands tour of Georgiev's Percussion Concerto No.3 Genesis with Tatiana Koleva and Kammerorkest van het Noorden, after the first 7 concerts across the Netherlands in 2019-2020 were met with critical acclaim. During the lockdowns in London he composed, recorded and released as an album his new Violin Concerto, humbly dedicated to all medical doctors, health workers and researchers, starring violinist extraordinaire Vasko Vassilev, the first-ever Concertmaster of the Royal Opera House, and the Covent Garden Soloists. The lockdowns allowed the time to compose several other works as well, including Piano Concerto, Cello Concerto, Symphonic Triptych No.3, String Quartet No.2, cadenzas to Mozart's 20th and 21st Piano Concertos and others.

Martin Georgiev was educated at the Royal Academy of Music, London; and the National Academy of Music 'Pancho Vladigerov', Sofia, Bulgaria; obtained his PhD (doctorate) in Composition from the University of London and Masters' degrees in both composition and conducting. Born in 1983 in the historic city of Varna, Bulgaria, he resides in London, being both Bulgarian and British national.

His compositions have been commissioned by The City of Heidelberg and the Heidelberg Philharmonic Orchestra; The City of Varna; The Royal Academy of Music for the Mayor of London; Sound and Music for the BBC Symphony Orchestra; Varna Summer International Music Festival for the Sofia National Philharmonic Orchestra; Jessica Cottis and the Ashover Festival; AmBul Festival of American and Bulgarian Music for the Stankov Ensemble; the London Festival of Bulgarian Culture for the Forte Quartet; conducted by Michel Tabachnik, Fabien Gabel, Rossen Milanov, Jessica Cottis, Pascal Rophé, Vania Moneva, Franck Ollu, Gary Walker, Jacques Cohen, Dian Tchobanov, Keith Bragg, Plamen Markov; performed by Vasko Vassilev, Tatiana Koleva, Stankov Ensemble, Sarah Mason, Berten D'Hollander; Valia Dervenska & Nadja Höbjärt, Ivo Varbanov & Fiammetta Tarli, Forte Quartet, Frosch Quartet, Isis Ensemble, Carolyn Stuart & Svetozar Ivanov, Helena Nichols & Charlene Farrugia, Antonia Nikova-Georgieva and Raya Kostova-Humphries amongst many. His works have been performed across the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, USA, France, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Greece, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Israel and Italy, broadcast on BBC Radio 3, NPO Radio 4 (Netherlands), Rete Toscana Classica (Italy), Bulgarian National Radio, Hungarian National Radio, his Chamber Opera The Mirror with original libretto by Marike van Aerde was premiered in London in June 2009 by the Azalea conducted by Jessica Cottis, under the patronage of Lady Solti, Sir Charles Mackerras and Andrew Ritchie CBE.

Dr Georgiev has completed his PhD in Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, University of London, in 2013. His doctoral research with principal supervisor Dr Philip Cashian and subsidiary supervision with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Julian Anderson and Sir Harrison Birtwistle was supported by scholarships from the Wingate Foundation, Alan&Nesta Ferguson Trust and Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust. Central to it was the development of his signature technique for composition, Morphing Modality, which is a systematic approach to key aspects of the process of music composition inspired by the technique of ‘morphing images’ from the visual arts, integrating fundamental principles from the theory and practice of Bulgarian-Orthodox and Byzantine Chant, and informed by music psychology, perception and cognition. (For a multimedia web presentation - click here.)

Georgiev is also a postgraduate Conducting alumnus of the Royal Academy of Music where he studied orchestral conducting with Colin Metters, Sir Colin Davis and George Hurst. He was awarded the Fred Southall Memorial Prize for Conducting by the Royal Academy and scholarships by the ABRSM, the Royal Academy of Music, National Culture Fund of Bulgaria, the Municipality of the City of Varna and St Cyril and Methodius International Foundation.

He has also completed Masters’ degrees in Conducting and Composition and Bachelors’ degree in Percussion at the National Academy of Music ‘Pancho Vladigerov’ in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he studied with professors Plamen Djouroff, Krassimir Taskov, Tatiana Karparova, as well as a private ABRSM-structured programme with Professor Vassil Kazandjiev FBAS. He has also completed a Certificate (2018), Diploma (2020) and Master's Degree (2023) in Theology at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, supervised by Professor Dr Alexander Lingas and Rev. Dr Alexander Tefft.

Martin Georgiev is a recipient of numerous awards for composition and performance. He is a laureate of the International Composers' Forum TACTUS in Brussels, Belgium, where his works featured in the selection in 2004, 2008 and 2011; the Grand Prize for Symphonic Composition dedicated to the 75th Anniversary of the Sofia National Philharmonic Orchestra in 2003; the UBC Golden Stave Award in 2004; orchestral commission prize in memory of Sir Henry Wood by the Royal Academy of Music, London, in 2011; he was a finalist of the Hindemith Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Germany (2011) and a recipient of 15 prizes from national and international competitions as a percussionist.

He has been music producer for critically acclaimed releases with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the English Chamber Orchesra, and pianists Ivo Varbanov and Fiammetta Tarli, for Hyperion Records.