SOFIA GUBAIDULINA

Honored Artist of Russia, Sofia Gubaidulina ranks among the greatest composers of the 20^th century. She began practicing music at the age of five and received her musical education in Kazan and in Moscow at the Moscow Conservatory.

From 1969 and into the early 1970's Sofia Gubaidulina worked at the Moscow Experimental Music Hall where she collaborated with the studios, wrote music for feature films, documentaries and animated films, most notably “Mowgli,” “Scarecrow,” “The Cat Who Walked by Herself” and others. Since 1975, together with composers Viktor Suslin and Vyacheslav Artemov, she became part of the improvisational group Astraja whose creative experiments were not well received by official critics.

As a true representative of the flamboyant Russian artists of the 1960's, Sofia Gubaidulina remained officially blacklisted and her works, along with many other Russian composers, we banned. She and her works were reinstated at the close of the 1980's. Gubaidulina, followed by Edison Denisov and Alfred Schnittke, formed the triad of the Soviet avant-garde in the 1960-1980's.

An Honorary Member of the Academy of Art in West Berlin, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, State Prize Laureate of Russia, winner of numerous international prizes including the VII International Composers Competition in Rome, the Prix de Monaco, the Koussevitzky International Record Award (USA), the Praemium Imperiale in Japan and others.

In 2002, the King of Sweden presented Sofia Gubaidulina the Polar Music Prize - the musical equivalent of the Nobel Prize in music. The award was established by the manager of the legendary rock group ABBA Stig Anderson and the Swedish Royal Academy of Music in 1992. Among its recipients are Paul McCartney, Elton John, Mstislav Rostropovich, Ray Charles and other musicians, performers and composers of the twentieth century.

Since 1993, several festivals devoted to her works are held regularly in Russia, Paris and Lockenhaus (Austria), in Dornach, and Avignon. In 2001 the Center for Contemporary Music in Kazan was dedicated to her and she was elected Honorary professor of the Kazan Conservatory.

Since 1992 she has lived and worked in Germany.