Formerly a member of Le Mystere des Voix
Bulgares choir, singer Silvia emigrated to Australia in 1994. She joined Martenitsa
Choir as its soloist shortly after, and has since performed widely with them and
appears on several of their CDs. Silvia toured to Berlin in 2003 with 4 other
Martenitsa choristers and the Mara! group for Legs on the Wall's "Homeland"
at the Berlin Poetry Festival.
The
Silvia Entcheva Trio (with Llew and Kim Sanders) has performed at many festivals, concerts and broadcasts in Eastern Australia, and the CD
"The
Donkey Drank Wine" was recorded
in 1998. Drawing on the rich traditions of Bulgarian Folk music,
the trio uses
the traditional instruments gaida, kaval, bozouki, tambura and tapan as well as
contemporary keyboard sounds.
One of Silvia's more recent projects, "Pippero" with Jarnie Birmingham and Mara performed its first concert at the Sydney A Cappella Festival in 2001, and broadcast for the ABC. This trio is a Bulgarian style women's singing group.
Silvia performed solo at the Woodford Folk
Festival, December 2002, and with Martenitsa at the National Folk Festival at
Easter 2003 in Canberra. In 2004 she gave workshops and performances at the
National, and starred in the Belvoir Street Theatre's production of Nigel
Jamieson's "In Our Name". Silvia, Mara, Jarnie and Llew are working with Sean
Parker on a new dance/music/theatre piece entitled "Blood Puppet".
Trio Pippero perform on Silvia's latest CD "If I Were a Bird" review below by John Shand (Sydney Morning Herald February 2006)
Bulgarian open-throat singing is dramatic and severe, but Silvia Entcheva sweetens the effect.
The purity of the voice, the pretty, ingenuous face on the cover and the innocence implicit in the traditional Bulgarian songs are all one. And "one" is the operative word as Silvia Entcheva presents a program of largely unaccompanied renditions of her homeland's folk songs.
I first saw Entcheva perform solo at the Erskineville Music Festival. She looked like a porcelain doll in her colourful traditional garb and stopped the audience dead as her remarkable voice darted and billowed around in a church hall. Readers may know her as a soloist with the Martenitsa Choir or via her trio with Llew Kiek and Kim Sanders.
Bulgarian open-throat singing is inherently dramatic and severe, but Entcheva sweetens the effect by creating such a pure sound. She maintains excellent rhythmic impetus without accompaniment and there are cute thumbnail sketches of the contents of each lyric. Further vocals from Mara Kiek, Jarnie Birmingham and Entcheva's daughters adorn five tracks and a dash of percussion embellishes two more.
Above: Silvia and Silvia Entcheva Trio pic: Atti Turcsanyi; Trio Pippero at St Fiacre's Church Leichhardt, If I were a Bird cover pics Karen Steaines