Meet Lora Tchekoratova

We were lucky to catch up with Lora Tchekoratova recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lora, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

I am a trained classical musician who learned to work hard from a young age. While I was unaware of the importance of my early training for the person I was to become, I am forever thankful for my early years in music.

Over the years, I have realized that enjoying the discipline required to bring any project, idea, or dream to reality is what I need to have a fulfilling and happy life.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Lora Tchekoratova is a concert pianist, pedagogue, artistic director, and festival maker. Her professional journey has been multifaceted.

She made her debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, in 1996 after winning first prize at the Washington International Competition for pianists, where she also received the audience prize and the prize for the youngest finalist. Since then, she has made recital appearances throughout the United States, most notably at the Phillips Collection, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, The Museum of Modern Art, and Allice Tully Hall in New York and Alexandria, Chicago, Miami, and Minneapolis and in major venues in Europe, including in Rome, Monte Carlo, and Prague.

Renowned for her interpretations of the Romantic era repertoire, Ms. Tchekoratova is also an enthusiastic performer of new music. She has premiered and commissioned numerous contemporary works by American and Bulgarian composers throughout her career. She has appeared at many venues for new music, starting while a student at Juilliard under the direction of her mentor Joel Sachs, who featured her as a solo artist at the Focus, Summergarden, and Piano Century festivals. Tchekoratova has also performed at the American Composers Festival in New York’s Symphony Space, the Keys to the Future festival for new and recent piano music in Greenwich House, and at the Dear Composer series at Scandinavia House for the Musicians Club of New York. Tchekoratova frequently performs music by composer Dobrinka Tabakova. With a grant from the Ernst von Siemens Foundation, she recently commissioned Tabakova to write a new piano quintet, Stone Trail (2023), for the Off the Beaten Festival. In addition, she has presented several concerts and talks featuring the Bulgarian composer’s solo piano and chamber music in the United States and Bulgaria.

Lora frequently collaborates with other contemporary artists, writers, and intellectuals to create and present multidisciplinary events and presentations of grants for emerging artists and composers. Such was her collaboration with the EuropeNow Journal, the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, and the American Foundation for Bulgaria. The organizations presented contemporary Bulgarian creative minds, including world-renowned writers Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria) and Elizabeth Kostova (USA) and celebrated artists Houben R.T., Ani Collier, and Rafaelo Kazakov. The collaboration led to an annual multidisciplinary grant to create contemporary art collaborative works. The Council for European Studies administers the award at Columbia University.

Lora Tchekoratova is a dedicated chamber musician. She frequently performs with her husband, violinist Georgy Valtchev. During the past season, they presented a series of concerts in Toronto, Maryland, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Washington D.C., and their native Bulgaria. In addition, they often work for the World Artists Experiences in presenting lesser-known music from Bulgaria. Other upcoming collaborations include performances with world-renowned artists: flutist Carol Wincenc, violist and composer Kenji Bunch, composers Valentin Sylvestrov, Peter Kerkelov, Svetlin Hristov, and Lora Al Ahmad, as well as cellist Zlatomir Fung.

Lora also appears regularly in various chamber music programs with members of the New World Symphony, where she was a fellow under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. These collaborations led her to performances in Miami (at the Lincoln Theater), Palm Beach (Kravis Center), and New York (Union Club), as well as on tours in Boston (Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum), Long Island (Residency in the Hamptons), and abroad. As a guest artist, she has been featured at many international festivals, including Kuhmo Nuori Musikii in Finland, Lappland Festspel, and Bastad Festspel in Sweden, Kneisel Hall in Blue Hill, Maine, as well as the festivals Apolonia, Sofia Music Weeks, and Varna Summer in Bulgaria. She has made numerous recordings for Radio and Television in Bulgaria, Sweden, Finland, and the United States. Her CD recordings for Gega New, Albany Records, and Naxos have received worldwide critical acclaim.

Lora Tchekoratova began her piano studies at age four and gave her first recital five years later at the State Music School in Sofia, Bulgaria. At age eighteen, she continued her studies at The Juilliard School in New York City, where she received her Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees as a student of Seymour Lipkin. Other teachers include Lydia Kuteva, Vessela Marinova, Prof. Jenny Zaharieva, and Oxana Yablonskaya. She serves on the faculty of Mannes Prep at the New School College of Performing Arts in New York.

Lora resides in New York with her husband and two children, Ivan and Mina.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Music, Art, management,

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I am always looking to collaborate with artists, designers and writers.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Ivan Nikolov, Borislav Zhuykov

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