Yıldız İbrahimova

Yıldız İbrahimova — Biography

Yıldız İbrahimova is a Bulgarian jazz vocalist of Turkish ancestry. She is known for a four-octave range, a gift for improvisation and a repertoire that refuses to stay with one genre, and she is counted among the best-loved jazz singers in Bulgaria. She has performed in more than forty countries and has lived in Turkey since 1993. At the end of 2025 she received an honorary plaque at the Ankara International Jazz Festival.

She started music as a child with piano lessons in Sofia and went on to finish the Music High School and the State Academy of Music. She first appeared on the jazz scene at the then-popular club Opera, with Mario Stanchev's quartet. Her first major breakthrough came as soloist of the Bulgarian National Radio Big Band under conductor Vili Kazasyan, in a concert shown on television. In 1981 she reached the international stage at a festival in Houston, and in the following years she sang at many European jazz festivals as well as in Ankara, Istanbul and İzmir.

Her discography reaches well beyond jazz: Turkish Folk Songs (1979), Jazz and Something More (1987), Illusory Eternity (1990), Balkanatolia (1997) with Ivo Papasov, the Romani songs of Marcanja and a children's album stand out. She also sings Bulgarian, Turkish and Romani folk songs and Russian romances. In 1993 she married Ali Dinçer, a former mayor of Ankara who was also born in Bulgaria; he died in 2007.