Anatoly Grindenko

Anatoly Grindenko (b. 1950, Kharkov, Ukraine) is a Russian viola da gamba performer, an expert on early music and znamenny chant singing tradition, director and regent of The Russian Patriarchate Choir (previously known as православный хор «Древнерусский распев», or Old Russian Cantus). Anatoly played on violin since he was four. After graduating from the Moscow Conservatory, he started touring in USSR and abroad with his sister Tatiana Grindenko and Alexei Lubimov. Vladimir Martynov introduced Anatoly to the world of medieval music, and he got seriously interested in the Netherlandish School, particularly composers like Johannes Ockeghem, Guillaume Dufay, Antoine Brumel, and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Grindenko became one of the first Russian viola da gamba players to give solo concerts, and he has been performing with Gidon Kremer, Alexander Rudin, Andres Mustonen, Nazar Kozhukhar, Andrew Lawrence-King, and many other artists and ensembles. At some point in his career, Grindenko decided to take a sharp turn and pursue a spiritual path. He went to the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius monastery to become a monk, but he wasn't accepted. After spending three years there, Anatoly established a choir with local seminarians and composed a liturgy based on traditional Znamenny chant. Eventually, he decided to create a more permanent choir in Moscow, which happened in 1985. "Old Russian Cantus" participated in many international festivals since then, performed in the UK, France, Spain, and Japan. The choir received an order of Russian-Palestinian Society in 1991. In 1998, Andrey Grindenko published a book called Divine Harmony, co-authored with a restorer A.N. Ovchinnikov and dedicated to Russian icons and liturgical singing.