Vasil Hadzimanov

Vasil’s (born June 23rd, 1973, Belgrade,Serbia) classical training began at the age of 5, and included attendance at one of the oldest music high schools in South East Europe, Stevan Mokranjac in Belgrade.
It was his interest in jazz, however, that won him full scholarship to attend the Interlochen Arts Camp for two summers in a row and afforded him the opportunity to study and perform with Milt Jackson, Curtis Fuller, and Bayron Stripling among others.
He moved to Boston in 1992 to study piano and arranging at Berklee College of Music on a scholarship. He graduated in 1995 and his piano teachers were Ray Santisi and Lazslo Gardony.
In September 1996 Vasil moved to New York, where he continued his work with some of the best young musicians. At the same time he worked as a music programmer at the “TOMANDANDY” studios (authors of the “Killing Zoe”, “Natural born killers“... soundtracks. Production-Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Laurie Anderson...).

After spending a year in the Big Apple he decided to move back to Serbia and finish what he started with his own VASIL HADZIMANOV BAND. His ideas of mixing Balkan traditional, folk rhythms and melodies with the western, modern musical styles (jazz, funk, world music…) in his own music is completely authentic and a new approach to fusion and jazz music.
For the last 15 years, Vasil and his musicians have continuously played his compositions on concerts and jazz festivals all over Europe, Japan and other countries with big success.
They also recorded 5 albums:
„11 reasons for...“ (2001), „Kafanki“ (2003) , „3“ (2007), „Zivota mi“ (2009), and the fifth one is in the process, scheduled for release in 2013.

Vasil is also a member of several other groups:
“Darkwood Dub”
“Bace Quartet” (with/Aleksandar Petrov, Bachar Khalife and Theodossi Spassov)
“Trio Sveti“ ( with/ Marko Djordjevic and Branko Trijic)
and his own piano trio along with Martin Djakonovski and Alek Sekulovski.

Here are some of the artists Vasil performed and recorded with:
Matt Garrison, Antonio Sanchez, David Gilmore, David Binney, Reuben Rogers,
Adam Deutch, Rodney Holmes, Chris Cheek, Danny Sadownick, Nigel Kennedy,
Bisera Veletanlic, Zafir Hadzimanov, Senka Veletanlic, Brankica Vasic Vasilisa,
Toni Kitanovski, Dusko Gojkovic, Jovan Pavlović and”Bengalo“, Bato the Yugo,
Stefan Milenković, Vlatko Stefanovski, Ayib Dieng, Paskal Bokar, “Ultranate”,
Leroy Jenkins, Oscar Salas, Izzet Kizzil, Samir Kurtov, Koja (Disciplina Kicme), Bojan Z, Rambo Amadeus, Sky Wikluh, Vojin Draskoci, Stjepko Gut, Lazar Tosic, Dado Topic, Slobodan Trkulja, Elvis Stanic, Rosen Zahariev, Hüsnü Şenlendirici…