Roman Stolyar

Roman Stolyar was born in Novosibirsk, Russia, in the family of engineers and received his first musical experiences at state music school. Then, being a student of Novosibirsk Institute of Electrical Engineering, he made his first steps to studying jazz - first privately, then, after his decision to leave the career of engineer, at Novosibirsk musical college where he entered in 1989. His teacher was Igor Dmitriyev, the most famous Siberian traditional jazz pianist and educator. During studying jazz at the college Roman chose the way of contemporary and free jazz enriched by elements of classical composing and folk roots. His first project, a duo together with excellent drummer Mikhail Wolfovitch,was formed in 1990 and made its first concert in Novokuznetsk on the annual Jazz Piano Festival. After Andrey Turygin, alto saxophone player, joined them, they started to perform as STS trio. Soon their group was invited to join the ALOHA project according to USSR - USA intercultural program, and they spent two weeks in Hawaii in January 1991. Soon he entered Novosibirsk State Conservatoire in September 1991 where he studied classical and contemporary composition and electronic music with Prof. Youry Yukechev, outstanding composer experienced both in classical and jazz music. After graduating from Conservatoire he continued his career as a jazz pianist playing in different collectives (including ALTER EGO, the jazz duo together with Andrey Turygin and NEW GENERATION leaded by brilliant tenor saxophonist Vladimir Timofeyev) and, besides, he created a number of compositions in modern “classical” manner but with elements of free improvisation. His music became soon known thanks to his collaboration with Sharomov vocal ensemble that commissioned him three cantatas and a large stuff of arrangements for them. He also made some works for theatres (including two musicals for children theater “Smile”) and, ultimately, was invited as a principal composer to Novosibirsk Academic Theater “Globe” in September 2000. As an educator he works at the jazz department of Novosibirsk musical college where he has developed his own training course “Theoretical Foundations of Jazz Improvisation”.

In the very beginning of year 2000 he and young singer Yelena Silantieva created a new duo called SHANTI which now gives Roman the opportunity to manifest his skills in a way of integration of different kinds of music, including jazz, rock, and folk music. Another group Roman created is free improvising trio TRIGRAFICA (together with Mikhail Sergeev - percussion & noises, and Vjacheslav “Slava” Murin - ethnic flutes, tuba and handmade instruments) which has just made its successful performances on different exhibitions in Novosibirsk. His last active project is DOTS & LINES which was born as a result of collaboration with young improvisers from Saint Petersburg.

Roman Stolyar has participated in many festivals and concerts of jazz, improvisation and contemporary music in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Slovenia, Poland, Denmark and UK. He has collaborated with many outstanding musicians including Anatoly Vapirov (Bulgaria), Vladimir Chekasin (Russia), Youry Kuznetsov (Ukraine), Carl Bergstroem-Nielsen (Denmark), Hans Schuettler, Heinz-Erich Goedecke, Ge-Suk Yeo (Germany), Susan Allen, Dominic Duval, Tanya Kalmanovitch, Vinny Golia, Blaise Siwula (USA), Martin Kuchen trio (Sweden), Tomasz Ondrushek (Czech Republic), free jazz groups Kieloor Entartet and Day & Taxi (Switzerland), Duo Havlovi (Czech Republic), folk band Lot Lorien (Bulgaria), jazz group Cohen Family (Israel) and others. He has released CDs under the labels of Ermatell Records (Novosibirsk), Electroshock Records (Moscow), Ayler Records (Sweden), and Intuitive Records (Denmark).

Since 1992 Roman Stolyar cooperates with annual Summer School of Contemporary Dance as an accompanist in class of modern dance. He has collaborated with numerous modern dance teachers & choreographers such as Nelson Fernandes, Christin Carter, Marina Collard (UK), Colin Connor (USA), Randall Scott (Holland), Torbjorn Sternberg (Sweden) and others.

Roman Stolyar is a member of Russian Composers’ Union, International Association of Schools of Jazz and member of Advisory Board of International Society for Improvising Music.