Oleg Karavaichuk
Oleg Karavaichuk was a Soviet and Russian composer, film composer, pianist, conductor, and improvisational musician. He was born in Kyiv into a musical family. His mother taught piano at home, and his father was a violinist who worked in film and theater. The family moved to Leningrad when Karavaichuk was four. He began writing music in early childhood and, at age nine, performed his own composition, “Lullaby,” at the Moscow Conservatory.
Karavaichuk graduated from the piano program at the Leningrad Music School in 1945 and studied at the Leningrad State Conservatory from 1945 to 1951 with Samary Savshinsky. His first film score was for Alyosha Ptitsyn Develops Character (1952); Moisey Weinberg served as his mentor on the project. Karavaichuk went on to write music for more than 150 documentary and feature films, as well as for theater. His work included scores for Short Encounters and Long Farewells, directed by Kira Muratova, and he worked with directors including Sergei Parajanov, Vasily Shukshin, and Ilya Averbakh.
Known publicly for much of his career mainly through his film and theater music, Karavaichuk gave a rare performance in Leningrad in the early 1960s. He returned to the stage in 1984, performing works by Mussorgsky and Beethoven for theater artists. After 1990, he appeared in Britain and took part in programs for the BBC Russian Service. His later performances often centered on improvisation: he composed at the piano as he played, and took part in events combining music with ballet, poetry, and video.
Karavaichuk received the Golden Ram award in 2002 for his score for Dark Night and the Sergei Kuryokhin Award in 2009 for contributions to the development of contemporary art. He died in Saint Petersburg on June 13, 2016, and was buried at Komarovo Cemetery.