Biography
Valery Gavrilin was born in 1939 in Vologda. His father died when he was 3, as a volunteer in the vicinity of the city during the Siege of Leningrad. When he was 10 his mother was imprisoned and Gavrilin was sent to an orphanage in the village of Kovyrino near Vologda. At the age of 11 he entered a school of music where I.M. Belozemtsev, a teacher at Leningrad Conservatory, happened to hear him and from the age of 12 to 16 Gavrilin went to the children's school in Leningrad at studied clarinet, piano and composition. In 1964 he graduated from the Conservatory with two specialities at the same time; composition (under professor Orest Evlakhov) and musicology (under professor F.A. Rubtsov), and shortly thereafter published the vocal cycle that would make his name, the Russian Notebook. He continued at the Conservatory as a teacher.
In television and film he cooperated frequently with director Aleksandr Arkadevich Belinskiy.
Valery Gavrilin died in St. Petersburg in 1999 at the age of 59 following two severe heart attacks.
The 70th Anniversary of Gavrilin's birth was marked by a Gavrilin Festival in October 2009, including concerts in memory of Valeri Gavrilin in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Vologda, and Cherepovec, by ensembles including the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Fedoseyev.
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