The Mihail Filippov Quintet is one of the youngest bands in this country. It is lined up with musicians who work on various projects – jazz, pop and Latino ones. They joined forces in the autumn of last year with the idea to create music free of stylistic dogma. Their most prestigious appearance so far was at the festival A to JazZ in Sofia where the audience accepted them very well.

"We are close friends”, pianist Mihail Filippov says. “We play in other bands and we get on very well together on stage. I was curious to find out what would happen, if we teamed up for a joint project - not only for the music, but also for the experience. Let me introduce to you the others - Dennis Popstoev - saxophone, Panayiotis Zachariou – guitar, Anton Piperov - bass, Ruslan Dramchev - drums. It is hard to define the style of the music we make because we pursue a diversity of styles and manners of performance. In fact this was what I was after: zero style restrictions. Let anyone of us work to add touches to our joint creative product. In fact we experiment by mixing jazz, funk and world music.”

Mikhail has graduated from the National School of Music and is currently a student at the Pop and Jazz Department of National Music Academy in the class of Antoni Donchev (jazz pianist, composer and conductor of the Bulgarian National Radio Big Band). Dennis Popstoev – the saxophonist in the band, is also a student at the Music Academy.

"I am a graduate of the National School of Music too. There I was trained in the class of Emmanuel Manolov – the Almond, a great teacher and a very interesting person. I write music and arrangements, like everyone else in Mihail Filippov quintet, of course. I think this distinguishes us as a band. The final product is actually a unique piece created by all members of the quintet.”

The young musicians say that they listen to plenty of music and learn from different generations of performers and composers. "Now on the Internet you can find everything" - says Mihail. "I, Dennis and the others in the band have common idols - saxophonists Kenny Garrett, Chris Potter, pianist Herbie Hancock ... All they have influenced our professional growth”. Of course, they have learned even more from their Bulgarian teachers and professors. And Dennis adds: “I admire saxophonist Dimitar Liolev. I think his album represents well written and brilliantly performed music.”

Like the rest of their peers, they cannot imagine that a few decades ago jazz was not among the popular music styles here. "We are happy that we were born in a different era. We have the freedom to choose, and it matters a lot to an artist”.

English: Daniela Konstantinova

The audio file contains the following pieces:

1/ ЕМВ

2/ Forest Train

3/ Sawyer Generation