Ruslan Kamyshin

Ruslan Petrovich Kamyshin, MMus, PhD (b. 29 January 1962, Perm', then Soviet Union) is a Uralican composer in the Post-Romantic school of thought, and is Uralica's best-known Russian classical composer.

Biography

Kamyshin was born to Pyotr Kamyshin, a Russian violist, and Tatyana Kamyshina, an Udmurt violinist in Perm'. Never particularly politically active or patriotic, young Ruslan instead found his calling in music, learning to play the cello starting at just four years of age and cutting his trade as a cellist in concerts and quartets by the time he was ten. He loved to improvise with his cello as well, and this had many around him and his family thinking that he was destined for the career of a composer.

They were right. A rather unrefined, but "emotionally-charged" piece of music called Semya ("Family") was first penned for solo cello when he was only 11. After hearing the young Kamyshin play it, the Urals Mussorgsky State Conservatoire decided to take the prodigy under their wing, and within a year he penned his first symphony, a form of music for which he has since become quite well known.

Always prefering to lose himself in his music, it took his parents being jailed on falsified charges in 1982 for him to become more outspoken about the state of his country. Before the government was able to pursue him, though, Leonid Brezhnev, then-leader of the Soviet Union, died. After years of petitioning and the deaths of two more Soviet Union leaders, his parents were set free during the Gorbachev Regime, in 1985. Between his first published symphony at age 12 in 1974, and the release of his parents, he penned six symphonies.

A "fan" of glasnost, he would use this term as the name for his famous Seventh Symphony in G major, published in 1988. With communism giving way to nationalism, he decided to explore his Udmurt side, through discussions with his mother, and eventually, a move to Izhevsk, where he lived, taught, and composed for 16 years from 1989 to 2005.

The coming of the Great Cataclysm, however, worried him and his family enough that they moved into the country, specifically to the village of Ust'-Kolom' in the Komi Republic.

From January of 2006 to March of 2007 he lived in relative peace, composing as he gained inspiration to do so. But during Great War III they were forced to flee again, this time to the remote town of Naryan-Mar, because of Russian extremist vigilantes killing those of Uralic descent, in what came to be known as the Uralic Purges. It would take until October (after the Unjust War) for Ruslan to return to his adopted hometown.

Even then there were still the stories. Uralics were still persecuted in the cities across what was once Russia, even in areas that were dominantly Uralic, whether Mari, Udmurt, Komi, or Mordvinic. Kamyshin used his fame to promote a message of tolerance and peace, and this got the attention of a 25-year-old Mordvin woman named Oksana Ivanova, who was living in Saransk at the time. She began to write letters to him, and they began a correspondence as Ruslan felt he had found a kindred spirit.

They finally met in December, at one of his concerts, which was in Kirov, and he fell madly in love with her. Her kind and pure heart and giving spirit won him over immediately, and he began attending church services with her in spite of his relative religious apathy.

March 2008 came, and the Syktyvkar riots with it. He was there for the day for a music seminar the day it happened (2 March), and watched in horror as Russian extremists tried to kill Uralics, but were beat back by Uralics and their supporters.

It was then that he again used his popularity to promote peace and tolerance, and Jarkko Salomäki still considers him one of the catalysts behind the Three-Day Revolution. Kamyshin would actually meet the Christian Uralic leader on the second day of said Revolution, and it was that day that Kamyshin made the decision to become a Christian.

He returned to his hometown with girlfriend in tow, newly-inspired. A week before Uralica's foundation, he began penning his triumphant 17th Symphony in D major, called "Born Anew," and was invited to play one of his self-penned string quartets on the official day of Uralica's founding, 18 March. With his mother playing violin, his father playing viola, him playing cello, and his younger brother Natan playing contrabass, they played String Quartet #22 in F major, which has become known as the "Founding Quartet" because of when it was played.

The following day, just before Uralica's admission to the CCC was made public, Kamyshin was baptised in Syktyvkar at the Sikkivukarin Luuterilainenkirkko. The following Sunday, he proposed to Oksana. They married in mid-July, two days after Ruslan received a PhD in Music from Uralikan Yliopisto.

Kamyshin now lives in Syktyvkar with Oksana and their first-born, German, and has recently published his twentieth symphony as well as his thirty-sixth string quartet. He is a professor at UY, teaching music composition and theory, while Oksana is working on a MMus under him at the moment.

List of Works

Ruslan Kamyshin's catalogue of acoustic works comprises two major sections - his orchestral work (20 symphonies, 7 film scores, 2 tone poems, and a cello concerto) and chamber music (36 string quartets, five string quintets with a second cello, two string quintets with a second violin, and ten cello sonatas). He has also, with sounds programmed by Karl Miller under his supervision, composed seventeen electronic classical pieces. Therefore the number of pieces he has composed numbers (as of 26 August 2009) exactly one hundred.

Electronic Pieces

• Okruzheniye ("Ambience," 8-track CD released 24 May 2008)
• Sfery' ("Spheres," 9-track CD released 8 March 2009)