Alexander S. Ryzhinsky

Alexander Ryzhinskiy was born in 1981 in West Siberia. He received his first musical education as a member of Choir of boys and young men "Nightingales" in Omsk, Russia. While studying at the Omsk Musical College (1996 – 2000) he served as a choirmaster of this choir. From 2000 to 2005 Alexander Ryzhinskiy studied choir conducting at the Gnesins’ Russian Academy of Music in Moscow. In 2008 he defended a PhD dissertation devoted to Schönberg's choral music. Since 2009 he has been teaching at the Gnesins’ Russian Academy of Music. Since 2019 he has served as the Rector of the Academy.

Here he founded the Gnesins’ Ensemble of contemporary music «Altro Coro» dedicated to discovery and promotion of unknown Western and Russian composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Since 2010 the ensemble has performed works by A. Schönberg, S. Gubaidulina, A. Pärt, J. Tavener, H. Holliger, L. Dallapiccola, L. Nono, P. Dusapin and other composers.

The ensemble is a winner of different international choral competitions. «Altro Coro» became a champion of IX World Choir Games in Sochi (2016), recieved the «Grand Pix of Nations» in Berlin (2017) and the «Grand Prix of Nations» in Gothenburg (2019).

Besides pedagogical and choirmaster's work, Alexander Ryzhinskii writes articles on Western European choir avant-garde. In 2016 he defended his second doctoral (equivalent of Habilitation) dissertation on the subject "Italian Choral Music of the Second Half of the 20th Century".