Ivan Sokolov

Ivan Glebovich Sokolov is a Russian composer, pianist, and musicologist, born on 29 August 1960 in Moscow. He was born into the family of the historian of ancient art G. I. Sokolov.

In 1978 he graduated from the Gnessin Music College, where he studied piano with I. I. Naumova. In 1983 he completed studies at the Moscow State Conservatory in two specialties: as a composer at the theoretical-composition faculty in the class of Professor N. N. Sidelnikov, and as a pianist at the piano faculty in the class of Professor L. N. Naumov. In 1986 he finished an assistant traineeship at the Moscow Conservatory under the supervision of Professor N. N. Sidelnikov.

Since 1988 Sokolov has taught at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1988-1994 he worked at the department of instrumentation and score reading, and from 2005 onward at the department of interdisciplinary specializations for musicologists. He has taught the course Theory of Musical Content, an elective on piano music of the 20th and 21st centuries, and chamber ensemble at the faculty of historical and contemporary performance art. He also taught at the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music from 2006 to 2011 and earlier worked at the Academic Music College attached to the Moscow Conservatory and at a children's music school, teaching composition and improvisation.

He has been a member of the Association for Contemporary Music since 1990. He became a member of the Union of Composers of the USSR in 1987 and, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a member of the Union of Composers of Russia. From 2012, festivals in Moscow devoted to his work have been held under the name Sokolov Festivals. In 2017 a candidate dissertation by musicologist and pianist Natalya Ruchkina on his output, titled "The Compositional творчество of Ivan Sokolov: the formation of the 'simple' style," was defended at the State Institute for Art Studies. Since 2018 the international multimedia competition for pianists and musicologists "Earth and Sky" has been organized around his work.

Sokolov gained wide recognition through his authorial lecture cycle "From Bach to Our Days," consisting of 280 episodes. He has also prepared further lecture courses, including "The Connection of Music with Painting and Poetry" and "About Music, About Time." His lectures are available through his YouTube channel and social media communities devoted to classical music, and audio versions have been published as podcasts. He also gives lecture-concerts in museums and concert halls, including the Moscow Conservatory, Moscow Philharmonic, Tretyakov Gallery, Pushkin Museum, Scriabin Museum, Bogolyubov Arts Library, Prokofiev Museum, and Vasnetsov Museum. In 2021, according to a survey by the newspaper Musical Review, he was given the title "Educator of the Year."

As a composer, Sokolov has written operatic and stage works, chamber music, vocal music, choral pieces, solo instrumental music, and a large body of piano music. His stage and large-scale works include the collaborative opera "Cryptophonica" (1995), "Miracle Loves to Warm Its Heels" (2000), the children's tale "The Monkey and the Golden Ball" (2004), and a Piano Concerto (2019). His chamber catalog includes sonatas, trios, quartets, quintets, and numerous pieces for flute, violin, viola, cello, clarinet, harp, bassoon, and mixed ensembles.

His vocal and choral output includes romances and song cycles on texts by Fyodor Tyutchev, Andrei Platonov, Valery Bryusov, Afanasy Fet, Velimir Khlebnikov, and others, as well as the cantata "You Are the Faces of Flowers" on words by Gennady Aigi and the choral concert "Trees" on words by Nikolay Zabolotsky. His piano works include pieces from early childhood composition onward, among them "Books on the Table," "Drawing in Solitude," "Evening Birds," "Gospel Pictures," "Sketches," and several collections from 2023-2024 such as "Three Nocturnes," "Six Intermezzos," "Six Consolations," and "16 Landscapes." The article also notes scholarly attention to his music and to the formation of what has been described as his "simple" style.