Sergey Zagny (born 1960 in Moscow) is a Russian composer and music teacher. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1988 and has taught polyphony, harmony, and musical form there since 1992. He also performs improvisational music on unconventional instruments.
Zagny led the Garden Orchestra of the Workshop for Individual Direction from 1992. From 1993 to 1995 he worked at the Theremin Center, where he created many of his electronic works. His music through 1982 used what the article describes as an expanded-tonal or atonal style; most of his works from 1982 to 1992 are based on diatonicism and tonality. He has written electronic music since 1993, as well as music for film and theater.
His works include Four Canons for violin and cello and Four Canons for piano (both 1981), Ornaments for piano (1982), a Brass Quintet and a String Quartet Fugue (both 1985), a Piano Sonata (1990), Electronic Music No. 1 (1993–1994), a Requiem (1997), Homage to Béla Bartók (Bagatelle) (1999), and Fragments from Swan Lake for chamber ensemble (2003). His later works include a Barcarolle for piano (2011). His music has been performed at festivals including Bang on a Can in New York in 1992, the European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück in 1993, and the Edinburgh International Festival in 1995. He has taken part in performances with A. Batagov, M. Pekarsky, and L. Rubinstein, and in productions of the Vocal-Instrumental Theater with I. Yusupova, S. Savenko, cellist D. Cheglakov, and ballerina E. Lukyanchikova.
In his theoretical writings, including Transformations of Musical Structures, Zagny examined musical transformations based on the concept of a mathematical function; he applied this idea in Four Canons (1981). He received the first Russian John Cage Prize in 1992.