Ellis and Jodie's Bulgarian Adventure

On our weekend cultural tour in central Sofia, we also visited the National Art Gallery , located in the former royal palace of Bulgaria and home to a huge collection of Bulgarian art. The reason for our visit was an exhibition of Degas statues. However, only one of the statues was actually done by Degas himself. The others were sculpted by his students after the artist's death, however they were cast in the molds he had created. Even so, the collection of ballerinas and wild horses, all in black and vivid motion, was quite interesting. Note the photographer and his wife in the mirror!

Our favorite Bob Dylan is the classic folk Dylan, with just his voice, guitar and harmonica, and those wonderful folk/rock/protest songs of pure poetry. Still, seeing him in concert is an unforgettable experience. A number of months ago, Ellis suggested that we go see Bob Dylan when he comes to Sofia in June. Since I am a big Bob Dylan fan, and he’s not, this was a very generous offer, which I immediately accepted. After waiting a number of months, the date finally arrived. Despite the on again/off again rain during the day, the skies were clear before the concert, so we walked the 20 minutes to NDK, where the concert was being held. We had great seats in the middle of the 3rd row from the front (there were still chairs set up in front of us in the “orchestra” area for VIPs – but I believe that we were more comfortable than they were!) Bob Dylan came out with his band, and gave a great performance for about 1 ½ hours. He sang a few of his old songs, and some newer ones (I must admit, I...

On our final night in Istanbul we went out to a folklore dinner. A car picked us up at the hotel and brought us to a huge hall, where at least 600 people gathered for dinner and the show. We had a table by ourselves, right next to the stage. The food itself wasn't anything spectacular, and most of the other diners were tourists. And then the show began. Bring on the bellydancers! When the performances ended, many of the guests started dancing on the stage to the beat of the Turkish music. It seemed like a party of an Israeli teachers' association, so we decided to call it a night.

This was the second time we went to a concert of the Bulgarian group, Lilly of the West . Lilly is a Bulgarian who, along with her band of talented musicians, sings and plays American country and bluegrass music, along with folk music from Bulgaria and other countries. The concert was a matinee performance at the Tea House in central Sofia, and came shortly after the release of the group's new CD, "Lovin' You". Jodie and I had called ahead and reserved a table, which was good because there weren't too many of them in the small Tea House, which regularly hosts jazz and musical concerts. We ordered steaming hot cups of herbal tea, a perfect antidote to the cold Sofia wind outside, and sat down to enjoy the concert. Lilly and her band performed songs from the new CD, including "Pennies from heaven" and "Tennessee waltz". Other songs included Patsy Cline's "Walking After Midnight" and "You Say It Best When You Say Nothing At All,...

This is an outing we had been saving for a rainy day, although on Saturday when we made the trip, it was a wonderful spring day at 17 degrees Centigrade. We went to visit a new museum in Sofia - the Museum Gallery of Modern Art. The exhibition at this small museum on Oborishte Street included works by Dali, Picasso, Chagall, Matisse and a few others. While it sounds impressive, we were finished with our tour in about 10 minutes. There just wasn't a lot to see. Picasso's granddaughter visited Sofia when this gallery opened a few months ago. That visit was probably more exciting than the Picasso works on display.

The coldest night of the year (-16 degrees Celsius) couldn't stop Jodie and me from going out, but the ice-covered plaza in front of the NDK Concert Hall almost stopped us. Nonetheless, we took our seats in the very comfortable chairs in row 12 to see the performance of Ali Campbell, formerly the lead singer of UB40. A word about Ali Campbell . Until a year or so ago, he was UB40. But apparently there was a management dispute, and Ali left the band (along with at least one other band member), and decided to go solo. He recorded albums on his own, set up his own band, and began to tour. And last night he came to Sofia. Actually, in Bulgaria his concerts were advertised as "Ali Campbell's UB40", but his new band is actually called the Dep Band. We went to the concert because of the songs we knew from UB40. Ali and his band performed many songs from his recent album, "Flying High", including "Whatcha Gonna Do," "She's a Lady," and "...

I (Ellis) first read about Bulgarian singer Lilly Drumeva in a recent issue of Vagabond Magazine, and when I learned she sang American folk and country music, I wrote her an email. Awhile later we received an invitation to a concert of Lilly of the West staged at the Bulgarian National Radio studio and we were pleased to attend. The performance was recorded for the Bulgarian Golden Radio Fund and was accompanied by an announcer giving the history of bluegrass and country music. The introductions were in Bulgarian, but with every other word being a mention of singers like Elvis Presley and Hank Williams, we understood everything. Lilly sang a mixture of country, folk, bluegrass and original compositions, and with one exception, all of the songs were in English. She performed songs of Shania Twain, Patsy Cline (" Walkin' After Midnight "), and Sheryl Crowe. Lilly was accompanied by her very talented band consisting of Yasen Vasilev on guitar, Ivan Penchev on fiddle, and Sv...

The Israeli Embassy in Bulgaria announced that famous Israeli percussionist and marimba player, Chen Zimbalista , would be performing in Sofia with the New Symphony Orchestra, so we made plans to attend. Jodie went to Bulgaria Hall in the center of the city one Friday morning and successfully bought the tickets. When we arrived last night we were pleased to discover that we were seated in the sixth row, center. According to what we learned about Chen, he "has dazzled audiences around the world with an enchanting array of rhythmic sounds that he cajoles from more than forty instruments, played with his lightening quick hands, some of them at the same time. His music - a euphonious blend of pulses and beats - defies classification." The evening's program actually started with Vivaldi's The Four Seasons , which highlighted four very talented young violin soloists. Then a huge marimba was wheeled to the front of the stage, and Chen came on to perform Concerto for Marimba ...

The 27th annual Sofia Marathon was run today, and I had a chance to catch the runners passing under the pedestrian bridge near NDK (National Palace of Culture). The 26-kilometer race attracted more than 120 participants, but there were many more runners circling back up Bulgaria Boulevard for the shorter 8.5km and 3.5km routes.

Two concerts in two nights, and the kind of music we heard couldn't have been more different. We went to the Jewish Community Center to hear Bulgarian Jewish singer Lika Ashkenazi and the Dulce Canto vocal group performing Jewish songs. There were a lot of speeches and presentations of bouquets of flowers, as the concert was celebrating the release of Lika's 5th CD, Shalom Aleyhem , pictured below. The music was all familiar, and it didn't matter if it was in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino or Bulgarian. Lika and the group represent the Organization of the Jews in Bulgaria "Shalom" at many song festivals both in Bulgaria and abroad. The Dulce Canto vocal group started in 2004. One of the highlights of the program was a duet between Lika and our friend Shlomo Amitai, who taught the group the song Yehi Ratzon , which is on the CD. When the performance ended, the audience, an older group and one that was a bit more behaved than the ZZTop crowd, was invited for snacks at the ...

We didn't know when we bought the tickets two months in advance that the concert of ZZTop , the legendary rock group from Texas, would take place outdoors at Sofia's Akademik Stadium on a freezing October night. But, at least it wasn't raining. We met Jodie's co-worker Dennis and his family and went through the frisking of security guards at the stadium entrance, only to somehow lose Dennis's wife and son for quite some time. Inside the stadium we took our seats and covered our ears at the loud noise from the warm-up band on the stage. The crowd was a mix of older Bulgarians and younger ones, but hardly any teenagers. It wasn't clear if the thousands who had braved the 5 Degrees Celsius were true ZZTop fans, or just people who wanted an excuse to hear American rock music. We wondered how Bulgarians could drink so much cold beer on such a cold night. Jodie borrowed my gloves, but what disturbed her more than the weather was the smoking. Even though we were outdoo...

Under the slogan "View Past, View Future", Sofia Architecture Week was marked by a poster exhibition on the pedestrian bridge leading to the NDK, the National Center of Culture. We walked across the bridge and noted the posters, some showing remarkable buildings in Sofia from the late 1800s, and others very modern constructions. It was quite interesting to see the posters set against the background of the modern, and not always beautiful buildings of the city. The poster below shows the Europe Tower, and behind it you can see the Sofia Hilton Hotel. I particularly like this last shot, showing in the poster a tram from the 1880s and on the street below, a modern Sofia tram.