The Conductor

Stanislava Nankova

It’s a long way from Dobrich, Bulgaria through Geneva to Le Brassus! On this path, on the shores of the Black Sea, Lake Geneva and the Lac de Joux, our conductor and adopted Swiss Stanislava Nankova, has traveled for the music that these area’s offer and keep them living. And her arrival at Le Brassus? Perhaps to honor her father, tenor and member of a men choir, who unfortunately didn’t not live long enough to see his daughter conducting…

But let’s go back to the early stages of her rich career: in Dobrich, where Stanislava studied piano and accordion at the Conservatory of her hometown, before graduating as a music teacher from the conservatory of Plovdiv, one of the oldest European cities.
Once graduated, she started working as a music teacher and assistant director of an international award winning women’s choir in Dobrich. Stanislava then founded a vocal ensemble of ten singers.

His passion for choral singing encouraged her to leave her home country for Geneva, Switzerland in 1999. Her goal? To study to become the choral director at the Conservatoire de musique in the class of a certain Michel Corboz. This collaboration paid off: Stanislava graduated as a choral conductor in 2002 and obtained a degree in teaching theory, with a thesis on Byzantine singing, in 2007. From 2008 to 2010, she held an assistant position together with an inter-academic research project at the Conservatory of Music in Geneva, again on Byzantine singing. This traditional liturgical chant of the Orthodox Church, which has long symbolized resistance to the Ottoman invader…

A musician never stops improving: in 2013, Stanislava earned a Master’s degree in Musicology at the University of Geneva. And she moves to London to improve her orchestra performance with Peter Broadbent.

In addition to the Chorale du Brassus, where she started in September 2015, Stanislava Nankova conducts two other choirs: the Liederkranz-Concordia with the lyric repertoire and the Choir of the Madeleine, with the repertoire of sacred works. She has German-speaking Swiss, Italians and … Combiers under her leadership! It is sometimes hard to understand that a musician with such a rich background finds pleasure in working with amateur singers. ‘The work with the amateurs is much more rewarding than with the pros,’ she says. ‘It leads to an emotional exchange of another nature!’ The singers of Le Brassus can testify that this way of working is a real force…