Aleksandr A. Knayfel’

Composer, Honored Artist of Russia, holder of the Order of Friendship, member of the Union of Composers and the Union of Russian Cinema­tographers. Lives and works in St. Peters­burg. Born in 1943 in Tashkent to a family of musicians. In 1961, he graduated from the Secondary Special Music School at Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad State Conservatory (the cello class of Emanuel Fishman). He continued his education at the conservatories—Moscow (1961–1963), where he studied under Mstislav Rostropovich, and Lenin­grad (1963–1967) in the composition class of Boris Arapov. The author of over a hundred compositions in all areas of musical creativity. The premieres of his works are heard at major music festivals in Paris, London, Amsterdam, New York, Zurich, Basel, Salzburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Co­logne, Maastricht, Ferrara. He wrote music for more than 40 feature films and journalistic films. In 1992, the first monographic festival of the composer was held in Frankfurt am Main. He spent 1993–1994 in Berlin, and was the first Russian musician to be awarded the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) interna­tional prize. Together with choreo­grapher L. Jacobson, Knayfel’ created the choreographic scene “Penitent Magdalene” (based on the works of Titian and Rodin, 1967) and the choreographic striptease “Disarmament” (based on the cartoons of Bidstrup, 1966).