Yuri Rozum is a Russian pianist, People's Artist of Russia, prize-winner of international competitions, president of the Yuri Rozum International Charitable Foundation, academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and professor at the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music and the Schnittke Moscow State Institute of Music. He was born on 22 February 1954 in Moscow.
He was born into a musical family: his father Alexander Rozum was a baritone, and his mother Galina Rozhdestvenskaya was a conductor and choirmaster of the Academic Russian Song Choir of Russian radio and television. His first music teacher was Anna Artobolevskaya. He later studied at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory with professors Yevgeny Malinin and Lev Naumov.
Rozum became a laureate of several international piano competitions, including the Queen Sofía Competition in Madrid in 1979, the Maria Canals Competition in Barcelona in 1980, and the competition in Montreal in 1984. He has toured in European countries, the United States, and Argentina, and has recorded about twenty compact discs.
In 2005, his name was given to the Zagoryanskaya School of Arts. In the same year, the Yuri Rozum International Charitable Foundation was established to support musically gifted children. In 2013, a music school bearing his name was opened in the Republic of Malta on the basis of the Russian boarding school there. He is also the founder of the international arts festival "Zvezdny", traditionally held in April in Star City and Shchyolkovo in the Moscow Region.
In 2014, Rozum's name appeared on a letter published on the website of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation in support of the annexation of Crimea. He initially stated on Facebook that he had never seen the letter and had not been asked for consent, but later confirmed his signature in an interview with ITAR-TASS.
Rozum has received numerous state and public honors. Among them are the Order of Honour in 2024, the Medal of the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" II class in 2015, the Medal "For Labour Valour" in 1986, the title People's Artist of the Russian Federation in 2001, and Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1987. He has also received many other cultural and public awards over the course of his career.