Murad Akhmetov (10 August 1948 – 26 February 2006) was a Bashkir Soviet and Russian composer. Born in Ufa, he was the son of the composer Khusain Akhmetov. He was named Honored Artist of the Russian Federation in 1996 and People's Artist of the Republic of Bashkortostan in 1999.
Akhmetov graduated from the Ufa School of Arts, where he studied composition and piano. From 1966 to 1971, he studied composition with Professor Aram Khachaturian at the Gnesin State Musical Pedagogical Institute. He then served in the Soviet Army from 1971 to 1972.
From 1971 to 1978, Akhmetov taught at the Ufa School of Arts and the Ufa Institute of Arts. Between 1976 and 1989, he worked to build the Bashkir music collection at the Union of Composers of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and organized appearances by Bashkir folk performers at international festivals and concerts in Moscow. He was deputy chairman of the Moscow Union of Composers from 1991 to 1995 and chaired its Audit Commission. In 1997–1998, he served as an adviser to the rector of the Ufa State Institute of Arts on national-culture matters.
He wrote the spiritual operatic diptych Khayyam and the Quran and Job. Khayyam and the Quran (1991–1992), described as the first Muslim philosophical-religious opera in music history, sets 18 rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam alongside excerpts from seven surahs of the Quran. Job is an opera on a biblical subject.
Bashkir heroic epic, the history of the Bashkir people, and writings by Bashkir poets and prose authors informed many of his works. His ballets include Mowgli (1974), after Rudyard Kipling; In the Night of the Lunar Eclipse (1978), after a tragedy by Mustai Karim; Northern Cupids (1980); Lord of Fire (1984), based on African legends and Kenyan folklore; Torquemada (1991); and Ural-Batyr (1998), after the Bashkir folk epic. He also composed the oratorios The Wounds of the Batyr, Poem about Salavat, and Dreams of Hiroshima.
His orchestral and chamber works include Apollo and Marsyas for 16 strings and solo oboe, Raga-Style Meditation Trio, the vocal cycles From Chinese Landscape Poetry and From Arabic Love Poetry, and the sonata The Labyrinth and the Minotaur. His five symphonies include No. 1, In Memory of My Father, dedicated to Khusain Akhmetov, and the Millennium symphonic triad: No. 2, Vargan Symphony; No. 3, After Reading the Bashkir Epic Ural-Batyr; and No. 4, Requiem—Uzun-Kuy. His final work, Symphony No. 5, On Eternal, Earthly and Heavenly Wanderings, remained unperformed.
Akhmetov also wrote music for productions at the Gafuri Bashkir Drama Theatre and for animated films. These included the Pilot studio films Aviators, Pums, Miracles, and Pearl Divers (all 1990), as well as Formula 1 (1991); Soyuzmultfilm's Contacts... Conflicts... Issue 1 (1984); and the Ekran creative association's Fatal Love, Film 1 (1989) and Fatal Love, Film 2 (1990).
He was described as an accomplished orchestrator who experimented with orchestral forces, incorporated sounds not readily captured in notation, and used traditional instruments from different cultures. He died in Ufa in 2006 and was buried in the city's Southern Cemetery.