Roussi Tarmakov first completed studies at the Institute of Architecture and Civil Engineering (1967–1972), before entering the State Academy of Music. He studied composition with Zdravko Manolov and piano with Rujka Tcharakchieva, graduating in 1980. In 1985 he won a scholarship from the Gaudeamus Foundation in the Netherlands, and later he attended the Cite des Arts in Paris on a scholarship from Bulgaria’s Ministry of Culture. In 1990 composer Georgi Tutev invited him to join the Society of New Music and the International Musical festival “Musica Nova, Sofia”, on which he has served on its board of directors since 1993, and from the year 2000, he was acted as its director. Roussi Tarmakov has worked as a broadcast editor for Radio Sofia, and later as an Executive Music Producer of the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra. In addition he has served between 1991-1994 as president of the financial board of MUSICAUTHOR, the society of authors and composers in Bulgaria.

At the end of 2000 he has lived in Canada and has held dual Bulgarian and Canadian citizenship since 2005. In Canada he works as freelance composer.

Tarmakov’s compositional career was launched when he won the International Competition of Queen Marie Jose in Geneva, Switzerland, for his Folk Music for 7 Instruments, a work which established him as one of the leading composers of his generation. In 2004 he won the International competition of TransforMusic in Budapest for his work With the Feeling of the Beauty of the Tango for amplified Violin and Orchestra.

Tarmakov is a polystylist who employs conventional material in original ways. Particularly remarkable is his technique of fusing folk elements in an improvisatory framework, yet the materials are layered in precise mathematical proportions.

His music has been performed in Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Hungary, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Korea, Sweden, and Switzerland, including numerous times at the Musica Nova in Sofia and Wien Modern festivals, twice at the Moscow Autumn festival (1997, 2000) and once at the ISCM World Music Days (1997, Seoul).