Vladimir Karparov

Vladimir Karparov was born and grew up in Bulgaria's capital, Sofia; he discovered music at an early age and already began playing the saxophone as a child. He studied at the State Academy of Music "Pancho Vladigerov" in Sofia from 1995 to 1999, with jazz and popular music as his main areas of concentration. He quickly realized that his fascination gravitated more towards jazz; to deepen his knowledge in this area, he applied for a scholarship to Hamburg's Hochschule für Musik und Theater (HfMT), with success. Yet the longer Vladimir Karparov lived away from his home country, the more intensively he began investigating Bulgarian folk music, which gradually became an essential and irrevocable component of his music.

Berlin's richly fertile, multi-cultural jazz scene exerted a magical attraction on the young saxophonist. Karparov moved to the German capital in 2002 to continue his studies at Berlin's Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" and graduated in 2005 with a degree in saxophone and teaching. His participation in various festival events as well as numerous concerts and awards in Europe, India, and Japan, together with his collaboration with names both on the American jazz scene and in Western and Eastern Europe, complete the picture of this versatile musician: Vladimir Karparov has played and/or toured with Theodossi Spassov, Jiggs Whigham, Gerard Presencer, Ivo Papazov, Peter Herbolzheimer, Kenny Wheeler, Okay Temiz, John Hollenbeck and many more to realize a wide spectrum of musical visions. After playing on a number of various projects, Karparov is currently preparing to release his first quartet album.