Igor Krasilnikov
Igor Krasilnikov (full name Igor Mikhailovich Krasilnikov; born 25 November 1952) is a Russian composer, pianist, and music educator. Born in Odessa, he has been a prominent advocate of electronic music-making and an expert in electronic music education. He created the educational disciplines “Keyboard Synthesizer,” “Keyboard Synthesizer Ensemble,” and “Computer Music Studio” for children’s arts schools and continuing education institutions.
In 1976, Krasilnikov graduated with distinction from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, studying composition with Professor Evgeny Golubev and piano with Professors Lev Oborin and Mikhail Voskresensky. He completed a postgraduate assistantship in composition under Golubev, also with distinction, in 1979. He joined the Union of Soviet Composers in 1979 and the Union of Composers of Russia in 1990. From 1979 to 1987 he taught orchestration at the Moscow Conservatory, and from 1992 to 1996 he taught piano at the Moscow State Open Pedagogical University named after Mikhail Sholokhov.
Krasilnikov received a Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences degree in 1997 for a dissertation on the creative musical development of younger schoolchildren through keyboard-synthesizer instruction, and a Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences degree in 2007 for his dissertation “Electronic Musical Creativity in the System of Arts Education.” His research concerns the development of electronic music-making in arts education, a subject on which he has published more than 240 scholarly and methodological works. He has conducted teacher-training courses in keyboard synthesizer and computer music in 38 Russian cities, and his teaching methods have been adopted by thousands of music schools, arts schools, and other supplementary music-education institutions. He edited a curriculum for synthesizer instruction and served as editor-in-chief of the journals Music and Electronics and SINTerra.
As a pianist, Krasilnikov has given solo piano recitals in Moscow, Berlin, Halle, and other cities. He made numerous Moscow radio recordings of twentieth-century composers’ works and recorded a Berlin compact disc of piano music. He has also presented author concerts of music for keyboard synthesizer.
As a composer, Krasilnikov has written 45 opus-numbered works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, voices, and choirs. His output includes String Quartet No. 2, dedicated to the memory of Dmitry Kabalevsky. His writings include the monographs Electronic Musical Creativity in the System of Arts Education, Methods of Teaching Keyboard Synthesizer Performance, Computer Music Studio: Teaching Methods, Synthesizer and Computer in Music Education, and Chronicles of Musical Electronics. His contributions to music culture and pedagogy were recognized with an Honorary Diploma from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation in 2011, an Honorary Diploma from the Russian Academy of Education in 2012, and the Gold Medal of the Union of Moscow Composers in 2012.