taught herself English--by watching the three 'Indiana Jones' movies over and over again. Only a few months later she won the First Prize at the 1999 International Enesco Competition in Bucharest, Romania, and keenly focused her sights on developing as a musical artist.

Bella Hristova was born, to musical parents, in the small commercial and manufacturing city of Pleven, Bulgaria in 1985. Her mother, a school choral conductor and piano teacher, gave her encouragement and a quarter-size violin, with lessons starting at age six. With natural self-assurance to complement exceptional talent, she played for a live television audience only months later. By age 11 she was regularly taking the train to Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, for study with Joseph Radionov, developing a dexterous technique and mastering repertory. In 1998, playing Prokofiev, she participated in master classes of Ruggiero Ricci at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. She decided to stay in the US and continue musical studies with Shipps at the University of Michigan School of Music while completing high school in Ann Arbor. Setting out on a career path, four appearances as concerto soloist with the Ann Arbor Symphony were sold out. Broadening the musical experience, eminent pianist Martin Katz coached her chamber music skills. On returns to the International Kocian Competition, judges awarded her First Prize in 2000 and the sweep of Grand Prize, European Union Prize and Barenreiter Prize in 2001. Becoming a remarkably well-rounded musician, her repertory stretches fearlessly from Bach to the latest contemporary compositions. Favorites include nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian works, a heritage through her late father, a composer himself. In September 2003, poised and dedicated and a mere 17, Ms. Hristova entered Curtis Institute of Music where she studies with Ida Kavafian.

Audiences from the Caribbean to the Pacific Northwest have already heard the blossoming artistry of Bella Hristova's violin playing. In 2002 she appeared before a capacity crowd of 11,000 at the Tanglewood Music Festival on a radio broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. Illinois, Olympia (WA), Wyoming, and Ashland (OR) Symphony Orchestras have featured her as concerto soloist. She has been a guest on Christopher O'Riley's radio program, From the Top, and was invited by him to appear in the inaugural (2004) International Young Artists Music Festival on Hilton Head Island of which he is artistic director. Other recent and coming engagements include a Grand Teton Festival debut, concerto performance with the University of South Carolina Orchestra, a ten-city tour with Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, a fifth concerto appearance with the Ann Arbor Symphony, returns to and the US and British Virgin Islands and Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, broadcast in June 2004 from Ocean
Grove, New Jersey and reaching four million radio listeners.

Bella Hristova plays a 1655 Amati, once owned by the famous violinist Louis Krasner, on permanent loan.