Roman Stolyar

Pianist, contemporary and electronic music composer Born December 6, 1967. Graduated from Novosibirsk musical college as jazz pianist, and then received Master degree at Novosibirsk State Conservatoire as composer of contemporary classical and electronic music. During studying jazz at the college Roman chose the way of contemporary and free jazz enriched by elements of classical composing and folk roots. His first project – a duo together with excellent drummer Mikhail Wolfovitch – was formed in 1990; then, after Andrey Turygin, alto saxophone player, joined them, they started to perform as STS trio. Soon their group was invited to join the ALOHA project according to USSR – USA intercultural program, and they spent two weeks in Hawaii in January 1991. After graduating from Conservatoire he continued his career as a jazz pianist playing in different collectives (including ALTER EGO, the jazz duo together with Andrey Turygin, and NEW GENERATION leaded by brilliant tenor saxophonist Vladimir Timofeyev). Besides, he created a number of compositions in modern “classical” manner but with elements of free improvisation. His music became soon known thanks to his collaboration with Pavel Sharomov vocal ensemble that commissioned him three cantatas and a large stuff of arrangements for them. He also made some works for theatres and, ultimately, was invited as a principal composer to Novosibirsk Academic Theater “Globe” in September 2000. As an educator he works at the jazz department of Novosibirsk musical college where he has developed his own training course “Theoretical Foundations of Jazz Improvisation”. In the year 2000 he and young singer Yelena Silantieva created a new duo called SHANTI which now gives Roman the opportunity to manifest his skills in a way of integration of different kinds of music – including jazz, rock and electronic music. Another group Roman created recently is free improvising trio TRIGRAFICA which has made its successful performances on different art exhibitions in Novosibirsk. As a piano improviser, Roman Stolyar has participated in many festivals and concerts of jazz, improvisation and contemporary music in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Slovenia, Poland, Denmark and UK. He has collaborated with many outstanding musicians including Anatoly Vapirov (Bulgaria), Youry Kuznetsov (Ukraine), Carl Bergstroem-Nielsen (Denmark), Hans Schuettler, Heinz-Erich Goedecke, Ge-Suk Yeo (Germany), free jazz groups Kieloor Entartet and “Day & Taxi” (Switzerland), “Duo Havlovi” (Czech Republic), folk band “Lot Lorien” (Bulgaria) and others. He has released CDs under the labels of Ermatell Records (Novosibirsk) and Electroshock Records (Moscow). In February 2000 Roman Stolyar was chosen a member of Russian Composers’ Union.