Anna Veleva presents “Opera on Broadway” with special guests Alejandro Olmedo and Victoria Tzotzkova

Anna Veleva presents “Opera on Broadway” with special guest Alejandro Olmedo 

Anna Veleva 

Soprano Anna Veleva has received international acclaim as one of today’s most gifted and versatile Opera stars. She has performed at major venues such as Carnegie Hall – Stern Auditorium, J.F. Kennedy Center for the performing Arts, Suntory Hall in Tokyo and The National Palace of Culture in Bulgaria.

Important figures who mentored and worked with Anna are Placido Domongo, Renata Scotto, Aprile Millo, Alec Baldwin and Bill Schumann.

Veleva has a Masters degree in Classical music and Opera performance and a Post Graduate Degree in Classical singing and Stage performance. She has graduated from the State Academy of Music “Pancho Vladigerov” in Bulgaria and “Mannes College of Music” of the The New School University in New York.

Anna was selected out of an immense competition to be one of the actors in Alec Baldwin’s Masterclass at the Southampton College – Long Island University. She has finished courses in Method acting Meisner technique in acting and Alexander technique of movement as well.

She has been recognized internationally for her Opera and Concert performances as well as Masterclasses in Voice and Stage performance. Anna quickly built a reputation of one of the most distinguished Vocal Coaches Internationally. She has learned and inherited the Vocal technique method of her grandfather Georgi Zlatev-Cherkin – one of Bulgaria’s most distinguished Composers and Professor’s in Vocal Pedagogy. Some of his students are World renowned Opera Stars such as Ljuba Welitsch, Anna Tomowa-Sintowa, Alexandrina Miltcheva and others.

The media has hailed her as “The New Opera Hope”.

Alejandro Olmedo

Alejandro Olmedo’s opera career began with the opportunity to sing live for Placido Domingo in 1987. Mr. Domingo, impressed by the beauty and quality of his voice, encouraged him to consider seriously an operatic career. Following Mr. Domingo’s advice and guidance, Mr.Olmedo began studying voice with Francisco Cassanova, Gustavo Marquez and Bruno Pola, the internationally acclaimed Italian baritone, who became his teacher and mentor. He also studied with the late Met coach, Luigi Veccia. In 1998, at the invitation of Placido Domingo, he sang for King Juan Carlos of Spain and his wife Sophia, Queen of Spain. Perched for an international career, his performances in leadiong roles with opera companies in the United States, Mexico and Europe, have won him wide acclaim.

Praised by the New York Concert Review for her “golden tone,” pianist Victoria Tzotzkova has performed widely, as both recitalist and chamber musician, notably at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Steinway Hall, the Miller Theater, Bechstein Piano Center, the Bulgarian Consulate General in New York, the Tsai Performance Center in Boston, Bulgaria Concert Hall in Sofia, Bulgaria, as well as in France, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. Growing up in Bulgaria, Victoria studied at the National Music School in Sofia, performing regularly and making several recordings for the National Television and Radio. She later continued her studies at the Manhattan School of Music with Ms. Rosetta Goodkind, and has also worked with Alexis Weissenberg, Philippe Entremont, Philippe Bianconi, Emile Naoumoff, Herre-Jan Stegenga, Jacob Lateiner, Peter Takacs, Patricia Zander.

Victoria Tzotzkova

Also a researcher, Victoria completed her PhD in music theory at Columbia University, with Professor George E. Lewis as her principal advisor. Her doctoral dissertation, Theorizing Pianistic Experience: Tradition, Instrument, Performer, focuses on sound production in classical piano performance, drawing on ethnographic theory and methods, psycho-acoustics and sound studies, and theoretical and experimental research in embodied cognition. Her research has received support from the Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative at Harvard University, and Columbia University’s Reid Hall Institute for Scholars in Paris, France, and has been invited for presentation in different forums, including at Columbia University, Harvard University, Indiana University, the Eastman School of Music in the US, as well as at Cambridge University, Durham University, the Royal College of Music, London, UK, and the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, Belgium. As a performer-theorist, Victoria also works in keyboard harmony and preluding practices, and has studied in the Nadia Boulanger tradition at the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, the Naoumoff Piano Academy in Gargenville, and the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, France. She is currently a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University.