Rumil Vildanov

Rumil Dzhangirovich Vildanov was born on 24 November 1939 in Frunze (now Bishkek), in the Kirghiz SSR. A composer, conductor and teacher, he spent nearly all of his working life in Tashkent.

In 1962 he graduated from the Tashkent Conservatory in composition, studying under Boris Zeidman. The same year he received a second-degree diploma at the All-Union review of young composers. From 1962 to 1968 he taught at the conservatory, and from 1982 he returned to teaching.

His early major works include the symphonic poem “In Memory of Lenin” (1960) and the oratorio “Lenin” (1964), set to poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky. Between 1962 and 1971 he wrote four symphonies, two piano concertos and a violin concerto, along with chamber and choral music.

From the second half of the 1960s Vildanov began writing for the cinema, and in the following years film music became his main line of work. He composed scores for more than ninety feature, animated and documentary films, among them “The Feat of Farhad”, “The Extraordinary Commissar”, “Chinara”, “A Man Follows the Birds”, the multi-part “Roads of Fire” (1977–1984) and “A House Under the Hot Sun”. For the last of these he received an award at the 11th All-Union Film Festival in Yerevan in 1978.

He also wrote for the stage: the Muqimi Theatre staged his musical comedies “Twelfth Night”, after Shakespeare, and “Andro and Sandro”, and the Navoi Theatre produced three one-act ballets to his music (1980).

Vildanov was named Honoured Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR in 1977 and received the Hamza State Prize of the Uzbek SSR in 1983. He died on 18 February 1987 and is buried at the Dombrabad cemetery in Tashkent.