Bogdan Vacarescu
Associate Lecturer
About
Bogdan Vacarescu has performed internationally since his teens, from Sydney Opera House and New York’s United Nations Concert Hall to London’s Southbank Centre.
Bogdan arrived in UK from Bucharest in 2001 with £100 in his pocket, plus a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music. Penniless in London, he earned his first pay-cheques at a pizza joint until György Pauk, his violin teacher suggested busking in Covent Garden. There he met members of the comedy string quartet Graffiti Classics and toured the world with them for five years. He also played world music festivals across the globe with the Balkan band, Paprika. He recorded soundtracks with Oscar-winning film composers Stephen Warbeck and Gabriel Yared, for Romanian National Radio and Television, the BBC and ABC Television.
His recent album “Violin and Piano Thrillers” with Julian Jacobson features Enescu’s Sonata no. 2 and virtuosic gems rarely performed since Heifetz. His passion is in rediscovering neglected chamber music which he showcases with String Dimensions and in reinterpreting traditional music from across the world with his band, Unicorn Frequency.
Having studied Schwartzman, Ratz and Pauk, he combines the German, Russian and Franco-Belgian schools of violin-playing developed in the late 19th century by Marsick, Joachim and Auer, then Heifetz, Thibaud and Enescu.
Bogdan is a graduate of the Music Conservatory in Bucharest and the Royal Academy of Music in London and is an associate lecturer at the University of Chichester, teaching violin.