Raya Kostova

Raya Kostova was born in Varna (Bulgaria) and began playing the piano at the age of four. She studied with Kety Marinova, Janeta-Benun Nikolaeva and Boyan Batchvarov and attended the National School of Arts in Varna. This enabled her to attend master classes with many influential pianists including Iuri Bukov, Catherine Vickers and Boris Bloh and Tomislav Nedelkovich-Baynov.

Raya has won numerous prizes and was awarded two scholarships as a gifted youngster by the Ministry of Culture after performances at the Competition for Czech and Slovak Music (Varna, 2007) and the International Competition for German and Austrian Music (Burgas, 2007). In addition, Raya was awarded a prize by the Mayor of Varna Kiril Jordanov for her personal achievements as a young musician in 2006/2007 academic year and she received a Diploma for an extreme music mastership by the Minister of Culture Prof Stefan Danailov.

Raya Kostova received the Elsie Prater Award in 2009 to study at the Royal Academy of Music where she is taught by Tatyana Sarkissova and has participated in many major master classes (Pascal Devoyon, Hartmut Rohde, Thomas Brandis and Simon Crawford-Phillips) and competitions, including winning 3rd place in the Else Cross Brahms Prize ‘11. She is regular guest of the National Bulgarian radio and gives concerts throughout the UK and Europe, recently performing recitals for the ‘Armonie della Magna Graecia‘ festival in Calabria, Italy.

Recently, Raya was awarded the Mirhane McLauren-Howard Bursary and the Cedar Trust Award to study at the Dartington International Summer School with Daniel Adni and on the Britten-Pears Russian Song Masterclass with Joan Rogers and Roger Vignoles respectively.

Raya is a keen chamber musician. She is a frequent collaborator with the baritone Thomas Humphreys. She is also a member of the acclaimed ‘Edelweiss Trio’, the members of which all hail from her native Bulgaria.