Yakhiel Sabzanov

Yakhiel (Yakub) Rafaelovich Sabzanov (February 20 1929 - September 10 2013) was a Soviet Bukharian composer of Bukharan Jewish descent.
==Life==
Yakhiel Sabzanov, a Bukharian Jew, was born in Dushanbe, and started to produce music in the early 1930's and 40's. His first teacher named Nasimjon Pulatov taught him to play a folk instrument called Ghijak|gidzhak for several months. Then some time later Yakhiel took lessons in another folk instrument called tunbura which is an ancient folk string instrument by legendary Shashmakom expert Neryo Aminov. Also Yakhiel learned another string instrument called Rubabe by Peoples Artist of Tajikistan Avner Mullokandov in the same time frame as he learned the other instruments. In 1943 Yakhiel entered Music School located in S.Ayni Theater of opera and ballet taught by Nadezhda Andreyevna Budkevich who became Honored worker of Arts in Tajikistan. Yakhiel continued to study Gidzhak in Music School which was led by R. Shakhmurov who found the young man a position in the Tajik folk instrument orchestra. 
In 1946, after successfully graduating from the music school, Sabzanov was transferred to the music college, specializing in gidjak. One of his teachers was cellist Samuil Markovich Frenkel and a violinist, Semyon Solomonovich, Muravin with whom he simultaneously studied violin, and later composition, under Alexander Stepanovich Lenskiy. 
After finishing the four-year music college in three years and with honors. Sabzanov was advised to continue his musical education, having received a letter from the Ministry of Culture of Tajikistan and successfully passing all the exams, which allowed Sabzanov to enter the Tashkent Conservatory class of 1955. At the second convention of Tajikistan composers in 1956, Yakhiel was accepted into the Association of Composers of the USSR and was elected an administrative officer and secretary of the Association of Composers of Tajikistan.Yakhiel then married in 1956 to the granddaughter of a former manufacturer from Kokand, Sara Pinkhasov.
== Compositions ==
Sabzanov's oeurve consists of more than 300 works, including opera, The Return (libretto by A. Shukukhi, 1967), opera Examination (libretto by F. Ansori, 1991), oratorio The Lights of Nurek (lyrics by Abdumalik Bahori|A. Bakhori, 1978), Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1955), Symphonic Poem Homage to Rudaki, symphonic and vocal-symphonic poems The Lyric Pamir, Makom, The Cranes, My Century. Yakhiel Sabzanov created more than 100 songs and romances, cantatas, musical comedies and dramas, as well as film scores including famous song ba dilbar sung by Shoista Mullodzhanova. More than 100 of his works have been in print as sheet music by the publishers of Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Tashkent, and Dushanbe and issued as gramophone records by the Melodia Company. Yakhiel Sabzanov compiled a number of anthologies: Lakhuti in Music, Hafiz in Music, Songs and Romances by the Tajik Composers, Children Songs, A Reader of Tajik Composer's Symphonic Scores, and others.
=== Honors ===
Yakhiel Rafaelovich Sabzanov (born 1929 Dushanbe) Composer, musicologist, community activist member of the Union of Composers of the USSR (1956), winner of the titles Honored Artist of Tajikistan (1974), People's Artist of Tajikistan (1989), professor, head of the Department of Composition, instrumentation and Score-reading of the Tajik Institute of Art (1977-1992), laureate and award winner of national and regional competitions of composers. He was twice elected as Executive and Deputy Secretary of the Tajik Composers' Union, had been a six time delegate to the All-Union Congresses of the USSR composers.
=== America ===
Yakhiel Sabzanov immigrated to the United States in 1992 with his wife, Sara and three children, Neyla, Arkadiy and Petr Sabzanov. In 1993 a fragment of his opera The Return was played by refugees in Carnegie Hall which was conducted by Beth Cohen.
While in America he put out two volumes entitled "Y. R. Sabzanov, Life in Music" (New York,1999, 2006).
=== Death ===
Yakhiel Rafaelovich Sabzanov died on September 10 2013.
Category:Russian people
Category:1929 births
Category:2013 deaths