Boris Kozhevnikov
Biography
Boris Kozhevnikov (30 Nov 1906, Novgorod, Russia - 8 April 1985, Moscow) was a prolific composer of music for Soviet bands.
He attended the Kharkov Music-Dramatic Institute, where he studied composition and conducting, graduating in 1933. He later attended the Military School of Music in Moscow. He was the conductor at several theaters and a faculty member of the Moscow Conservatory. He wrote a handful of orchestral works and over 70 pieces for Soviet military bands, including five numbered symphonies for band. His music was discovered by the West only after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain in the 1990s. He is still much better known in Russia than anywhere else, although his Symphony No. 3, Slavyanskaya, enjoys popularity in the U.S. thanks to an edition that former Marine Band commander John R. Bourgeois created for American bands in 1995. Although Kozhevnikov wrote Slavyanskaya in 1950, it did not receive its first performance in the U.S. until the late 1990s.
Works for Winds
- Symphony No. 1 (1943)
- Symphony No. 2 (1945)
- Symphony No. 3 (ed. Bourgeois) (1950/1995)
- Symphony No. 4 (1967)
- Symphony No. 5 (1967)
Resources
- Andy Pease's Wind Band Blog
- https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Kosjevnikov Boris Kosjevnikov. Wikipedia.] Accessed 22 July 2023
- Boris Tikhonovich Kozhevnikov, Classical Composers Database
- Miles, Richard B. 2000. Teaching Music Through Performance in Band. Volume 3. Chicago: GIA Publications. pp. 573.
- Sociocultural Perspectives on the Wind Orchestra Music of Boris Kozhevnikov, with an American Edition of the Fourth Symphony: Dissertation by Patrick Murphy