Yavet Boyadjiev is a Cuban-born violinist, researcher, and pedagogue.
Described as possessing “great charm” and “exuberant virtuosity” (New York Concert Review), Yavet Boyadjiev has performed in major venues around the world, including Carnegie Hall, and has been a guest performer at festivals and music series such as the Thailand International composition Festival, in Bangkok; the “Music in Midtown” concert series; and the international festival and conference “Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Fifty Years On,” in New York. With a specific interest in the piano-trio, Dr. Boyadjiev co-founded The Bangkok Piano Trio and the Arens/Grund/Boyadjiev Piano Trio.
Dr. Boyadjiev has had a lifelong commitment to the pedagogy of the violin. She has been on the faculty of the Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program, the Midori Foundation, Brooklyn College Preparatory Center, and the Kaufmann Center in New York. She has also taught at many summer festivals, among them the Hartwick College Music Festival, New York Summer Music Festival, Manhattan School of Music Summer Camp, and the Cremona International Summer Academy. From 2009 to 2020 she was on the faculty of Mahidol University College of Music, Bangkok, where she chaired the String Department from 2009 to 2012.
Her students have gone on to continue their studies in prestigious music programs around the world: the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts; the University of Performing Arts, Vienna; IMEP Institut Royal Supérieur de Musique et de Pédagogie, Namur, Belgium; and the Mozarteum International Summer Academy. Former students are members of the Bangkok Symphony, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, the Asian Youth Orchestra, and have won accolades in the Settrade Youth Music Competition, the Princess Galyani Chamber Music Competition, and the Osaka International Music Competition.
She has been invited to present master classes and lectures at major academic programs across Asia and North America; these include visits to the Chinese University of Hong Kong; the University of South Dakota; the Universiti Teknologi MARA, in Malaysia; and Saint Scholastica College and University of Santo Tomás, in the Philippines. She has been an adjudicator at national and international competitions, including the Bangkok regional of the Osaka International Music Competition; the Cremona International Academy String Competition, in Italy; the Settrade Youth Music Competition, in Thailand, the ENKOR Competition; and the National Music Competition for Young Artists (NAMCYA) in the Philippines.
Dr. Boyadjiev’s areas of academic interest include the history of violin pedagogy, the French School of violin, and the musical diaspora of the nineteenth-century music in the Americas, with a special emphasis on the life and works of the nineteenth-century Cuban violinist José White, on whom she wrote her dissertation, “José White Laffita (1835-1918): A Biography and a Study of his Six Études, op. 13.” She has been the recipient of several grants and fellowships, most recently the Benjamin Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society. Her writings have appeared in The Strad, Revista Musical Chilena, The Journal of the American Viola Society, and she has presented at several international conferences in Asia.
Born into a prominent musical family, her musical education began at the Manuel Saumell Conservatory for gifted children, in Havana. She holds a Bachelor of Music Degree from the Instituto Superior de Arte, Havana, graduating “Summa cum laude” and with distinction as “outstanding student teacher.” She received a Master of Music degree from the Manhattan School of Music, and completed a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where she was awarded several fellowships. Her most influential teachers and mentors are Radosvet Boyadjiev, Grigory Kalinovsky, Joseph Straus, Allan Atlas, and Malena Kuss.