Alexander Zhurbin

Alexander Borisovich Zhurbin was born in Tashkent. In 1963, he graduated from Special Music School and in 1969, he graduated from Tashkent Conservatory and Gnessin Music College as a cellist and a composer respectively.[2][3][4][5] He subsequently undertook his postgraduate studies as a musicologist in Leningrad, where he completed his PhD dissertation (1973) on Gustav Mahler's Symphonies.

His first big success came in 1975, with his rock-opera Orpheus and Eurydice. This work was the first of its kind in the Soviet Union and achieved great popularity. It was performed more than two thousand times in a row, and more than two million copies of the record were sold. For this opera, Mr. Zhurbin won many international awards, including "Star of the Year", in Great Britain.

He has scored more than 50 feature movies, including Dead Man's Letters and Perestroika.[6]

His six operas and three ballets were performed in leading Russian theaters (Leningrad National Opera, Moscow Chamber Opera).

All of his sixteen musicals are still playing in the former Soviet Union, and some of them have had more than 2,000 performances.

Since 1990, the composer and his family live in New York City. He served as a composer-in residence at the 92nd Street "Y" and a professor at Touro college. In 1992 he founded the Russian-American Theater "Wandering Stars", which became a major cultural force inside the Russian-speaking community, which produced nine large-scale theatrical productions, six of them with the music of Alexander Zhurbin.

His musical How It Was Done in Odessa, was a critical success at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia. It had an eight-week "sold-out" run with a very good reviews. (1991)

Among his compositions written in the USA are Cello Concerto, Violin Concerto, Symphony # 3, an opera.

"Good Health, Your majesty", a cantata "A Part of Speech" with lyrics by Joseph Brodsky, as well as songs, jingles and commercials.

In 1996, he had a very successful "Evening of Zhurbin's Music" in Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall) performed by Kristjan Järvi and the Absolute Ensemble. His latest theater works are musicals "Shalom, America" (after Sholom Asch), "Camera Obscura" (after Vladimir Nabokov), "Wandering Stars" (after Sholom Aleikhem).

Presently, he is predominantly living in Moscow, and traveling all over the world. He has written several major theatrical works: "Mousetrap" (musical after Agatha Christie), Humiliated and Insulted (opera after Dostoevsky) "The Seagull"– operetta after Anton Chekhov and many others. All of them were produced in Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and another cities. Also he scored the miniseries "Moscow Saga" based on the novel by Vasily Aksyonov.[7]

In 2015, there was an extended (2.5 month-long) festival of Zhurbin's works, which spanned almost every musical scene (opera, musical, symphony, rock, film), performances of his first four symphonies and including the premiere of his Fifth Symphony ("Speak, Memory!"), [8] as well as the premiere of Zhurbin's opera "Melkiy Bes"[9] (Petty Demon) based on Sologub.

A premiere of his new opera "Love's Metamorphosis" premiered May 2017 at the Moscow Musical Theater Nemirovich-Danchenko.[10]

In the 2020-2021 season, the festival "Serious and Light", commemorating the composer's 75th birthday, ran from September 2020 to February 2021. Many works were performed during the festival, including the premieres of operas "Anna K."[11] and "Happy Day",[12] the premiere of Zhurbin's Sixth Symphony ("Con Programma Letterale") and a number of vocal and chamber music works.[13]

He is married to the poet, translator and writer Irina Ginzburg. His son, Lev Zhurbin, is a composer and performer, living in New York.[14]

• Alexander Zhurbin's Official Website
• Alexander Zhurbin at IMDb