PYPFEST COMPOSER: POLINA NAZAYKINSKAYA

Posted on October 26, 2020

Born in Togliatti, Russia, Polina Nazaykinskaya has been studying music since the age of four, and composed her first large-scale work at 14. She went on to create music for both chamber and full orchestras, as well as art songs, film music, musical theater works, an opera, and, recently, her first symphony, April Song. In June 2018, The RIOULT Dance NY premiered Polina’s first ballet, Nostalghia. Last season, the Albany Symphony premiered Polina`s new symphonic poem Fenix.

Polina has received many national and international awards, including the Charles Ives Scholarship from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. Polina’s music has been performed by the Russian National Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Albany Symphony, the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the Yale Philharmonia Orchestra, the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Russia, the Omsk Philharmonic Orchestra, and many others. Polina has collaborated with top conductors, including Osmo Vänskä, Teodor Currentzis, Fabio Mastrangelo, and Hannu Lintu.

Polina is a graduate of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory College and the Yale School of Music. Currently, she is a Lecturer of Composition at Brooklyn College Conservatory.

Polina’s brand new piece was commissioned for PYP’s 97th season. The Rising represents the evolutionary development of humanity over time. Literally and figuratively. Just as we came to be as human society through many moons, many summers and winters to be the people of Earth we are today. The strength of human spirit and mind that always drives forward, searches for answers and dreams of the future. The fellowship of people as together we stand, joined in the choir of billion voices. The ascending motivic element ‘rises’ from the get-go, giving the music an organic sense of rising. The 10 violins are voices of people, intertwined, interdependent, not always in unison but united by the evolutionary force. To survive, to rise further and higher, to realize the potential of life to its fullest together, united.