Vladimir Karparov was born in 1977 and grew up in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia; he discovered music at an early age and began playing the saxophone already as a child. Shortly after the Turn in 1989, while studying at the French School "Alphonse de Lamartine" in Sofia, Karparov often played as a street musician. At that time he developed his skills of improvisation and deepened his passion for music.He studied at the “The National Academy of Music” in Sofia from 1995 to 1999, with jazz and popular music as his main areas of concentration. He quickly realized that his fascination gravitated more towards jazz; to deepen his knowledge in this area, he applied for an “Oscar und Vera Ritter-Stiftung“ scholarship to Hamburg’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater (HfMT), with success. Yet the longer Vladimir Karparov lived away from his home country, the more intensively he began investigating Bulgarian folk music, which gradually became an essential and irrevocable component of his music.

Berlin’s richly fertile, multi-cultural jazz scene exerted a magical attraction on the young saxophonist. Karparov moved to the German capital in 2002 to continue his studies at Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” and graduated in 2005 with a degree in saxophone and teaching. His participation in various festival events as well as numerous concerts and awards in Europe, Asia and Latin America, together with his collaboration with names both on the American jazz scene and in Western and Eastern Europe, complete the picture of this versatile musician: Vladimir Karparov has played and/or toured with Ivo Papasov, Jiggs Whigham, Nedyalko Nedyalkov, Theodossi Spassov, Kenny Wheeler, Petar Ralchev, John Hollenbeck, Stoyan Yankoulov, Gebhard Ullmann, Peter Herbolzheimer, Martin Lubenov, Uwe Kropinski, Amira Medunjanin, Georg Breinschmid, Aka Moon Trio, Peter Slavov Junior, Antoni Donchev and many more to realize a wide spectrum of musical visions. After playing on a number of various projects, Karparov has released in 2008 his debut album as a leader “Thracian Dance”. In 2009 he founded his second own project - the Forkolor Saxophone Quartet. The new Fokolor CD will be released in 2014.

Awards:
1996 "Best Young Jazz Musician of the Year" in Bulgaria;

1999 3rd prize at the International Jazz Competition in Monaco
;
2000 "Medica pro Musica" in Düsseldorf.