Rashid Kallimulin

Rashid Fagimovich Kallimulin, born in Zelenodol'sk, in the Tatar Republic, on 6 May 1957, is a Tatar composer whose work belongs to the musical life of Tatarstan in the final decades of the twentieth century. His output is useful for understanding how the music of his country sought a dialogue between national tradition and the languages of the present.

He trained in the class of B. N. Trubin at the Kazan State Academy of Music, from which he graduated in 1985. Two years later he completed postgraduate studies in composition with A. B. Luppov and joined the Union of Composers. In 1988 he returned to the Kazan Academy as a teacher and, in 1992, was appointed head of the composition department. His awards and his participation in juries and committees include first prize at the Weber chamber music competition, held in Dresden in 1987 with his String Quartet No. 3, "In Memory of Gabdulla Tukay". He also received the titles of Honoured Artist of the Republic of Tatarstan (1990) and of the RSFSR (1996).

His first recognition came in the mid-1980s with works such as that same quartet, which links the inner world of the national poet Gabdulla Tukay with the depiction of the early twentieth century. The organic fusion of styles became a recurring feature of his output. In the rock opera Cry of the Cuckoo, for example, the dynamism of the twentieth century coexists with the ancient roots of the Tatar people in the era of Volga Bulgaria, between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. Elements of Romanticism, the popular bait genre and resources of rock and jazz are blended there, without the national tradition being negated but enriched. In the 1990s he sought to renew the harmonic language of Tatar music and experimented with unusual timbral combinations.

His catalogue includes, alongside quartets and sonatas, symphonic poems and vocal works, and his written work, in collaboration with other authors, addresses the debate about the music of his homeland. His legacy is bound above all to the integration of the Tatar heritage with the modern musical language.