Sofia, Bulgaria

It stretches the definition of "recording" a bit, but I'd say Paul Lansky's album "More Than Idle Chatter"

This one's easy: I love wine, and I've studied it almost as much as I've studied music. And when you put the two together into a wine-and-music concert, it's just magic!

David Conte, Steven Mackey, Paul Lansky

"Don't forget your homework, and see you next week!"

"We had homework?!"

I spent my childhood singing all over the world as a member of the Sofia Boys Choir, so I always knew music would be a big part of my life, but I still remember the shock when I found out you can ACTUALLY major in it at an American university. I realized that dramatic composition naturally combines all my interests by being at the intersection of arts and humanities, quantitative thinking and imaginative storytelling.

Writing and producing a full-length opera as my undergraduate thesis at Princeton gave me enough street cred to be admitted into the American Lyric Theater's Composer Librettist Development Program, the only full-time curriculum in opera writing in the world. That, in turn, led to multiple opportunities to write for the stage and screen, and I've never looked back.

I would probably be a scientist. (Is it too late to be both?)

Drink enough coffee until the creative ideas start flowing. Then compose for a few hours until I'm almost but not completely out of juice (it's vital to leave a creative nugget for the next day, as a sourdough starter of sorts). After the composition work for the day is done, I tackle all other music tasks (orchestration, parts, editing, mixing, applying for grants, etc).

Stravinsky, Papa Bach, Jacob Collier

Having grown up behind the "Iron Curtain," I find 1989 hugely significant in finally uniting creators everywhere by allowing musical ideas to flow quickly and effortlessly around the globe for the first time in history.

An opera with wine pairings for each scene. (But I'm working on it!)

Nobody coughing in the audience.

The Emmy-winning documentary POSSIBLE SELVES (with director Shaun Kadlec), the opera THE HALLOWEEN TREE (with librettist Tony Asaro and based on the novel by Ray Bradbury), and the multimedia work CITY OF SPECTERS (with librettists Tony Asaro and Lydia Lim, based on a work of dissident fiction smuggled out of North Korea).

I am proudly self-published, and much of my work can be found at https://theopopov.com/multimedia