After a spellbinding performance at Llandaff Cathedral as part of the inaugural Festival of Voice in 2016, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares returns to Cardiff with a new concert "Voices and Strings" in collaboration with the composer and conductor Georgi Andreev and the musicians from Quarto Quartet.

Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares are a female vocal ensemble founded in 1952 as the Ensemble for Folk Songs of the Bulgarian Radio. The choir was put together to record traditional folk songs arranged for multiple voices that would be broadcast on the radio and later television in Bulgaria.

In the 1970s they were invited by Swiss music producer Marcel Cellier to be a part of an album of Bulgarian folk music, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. The ensemble became acclaimed worldwide when Ivo Watts-Russell, founder of 4AD re-released the album in 1986. The music has been praised by artists across genres from Frank Zappa to Kate Bush, Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins to Linda Ronstadt. The album’s follow-up Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, Vol II won a Grammy in 1989 with another two volumes following in 1990 and 1998.

Since the success of those recordings, the choir have gone on to perform internationally sharing their unique and powerful sound with the world.

The program of “Voices and Strings” features both brand new songs composed for the choir and a string quartet by Georgi Andreev as well as well-known songs from the choir's repertoire rearranged for string quartet by Andreev. The new compositions remain true to Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares' rich polyphonic style, which made the 70-year old choir world famous.

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