Nikolai Mazhara

Winner of the Piano Award at the Sergei Prokofiev International Competition (2004)

Nikolai Mazhara is a pianist whose repertoire includes not only the piano classics, but also contemporary works, among them his own compositions. 
A graduate of the St Petersburg Conservatory in composition (Professor Alexander Mnatsakanyan) and piano (Professor Edward Bazanov), he has won recognition as a performer of Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, and several contemporary Petersburg composers. A pianist who pays particular attention to Russian piano music, his repertoire includes works by Alyabyev, Glinka, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Lyadov, and Rachmaninov. He has successfully collaborated with St Petersburg´s leading orchestras under the batons of Alexander Dmitriev, Vladimir Altshuler, Alexander Titov, Vladislav Chernushenko, and Alexander Sladkovsky. Mazhara has had three solo evenings in the Small Hall of the St Petersburg Philharmonia, and has played solo concert programmes as part of the Days of St Petersburg Culture festivals in Alma-Ata and Tallinn.

A member of the Union of Russian Composers since 2005, Mazhara is the author of three Concertos for Piano and Orchestra, a Symphony for String Orchestra, Suites for Chamber Orchestra, and numerous other chamber pieces. His works have been heard at festivals including St Petersburg Musical Spring, From The Avant-Garde To The Present, Youth Academies of Russia (Moscow, Kazan, and Yekaterinburg), and Panorama Of Russian Music (Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk). In April 2008 he was named the winner of the Composers´ Award at in the Fifth Sergei Prokofiev International Competition for his Third Piano Concerto.

He teaches in the Department of Orchestration at the St Petersburg Conservatory.Nikolay Mazhara is a guest pianist of the Art-mdoern Foundation and resident composer of the Contemporary Past Music Festival in 2010. 

artists@amspb.org