Anton Rovner

Anton Rovner was born on June 28, 1970 in Moscow, Russia into a family of literati. In 1974 he and his parents moved to the United States. He studied composition at the Pre-College Division of the Juilliard School in New York with Andrew Thomas, then he studied at the Juilliard School with Milton Babbitt, receiving his Bachelor of Music degree in 1991 and his Master of Music degree in 1993. In 1989-1990 he studied composition with Nikolai Sidelnikov and music theory with Yuri Kholopov at the Moscow Conservatory through the IREX Arts Exchange program. He took music theory courses with Jeff Nicholls and Joseph Dubiel at the Music Department of Columbia University (New York). From 1993 to 1997 he was the artistic director of the “Bridge” contemporary music concert series in New York. From 1994 to 1997 he studied composition with Charles Wuorinen at the Music Department of Rutgers University, receiving his PhD degree in 1998. He took private lessons with Tristan Murail.

Since December 1997 he has lived in Moscow Russia. His music has been performed in New York, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Bryansk, Nizhni-Novgorod, Perm, Ekaterinburg, Kiev, Lviv, Odessa, Chisinau, Bucharest, Paris, Freiburg, Helsinki, Seoul and Caracas. The concert organizations and chamber music ensembles who have performed his music include the American Festival of Microtonal Music and the Composers’ Concordance concert organization in New York, by the “Helix!” Ensemble in New Jersey, by the Moscow Ensemble of Contemporary Music, the Studio for New Music ensemble, the 20th Ensemble and the Gallery of Actual Music ensemble in Moscow, “eNsemble” and the Sound Ways ensemble in St. Petersburg, the Ekaterinburg Ensemble for Contemporary Music in Ekaterinburg and the Archaeus Ensemble in Bucharest. His music has been performed at the “Moscow Autumn,” “Moscow Forum” and “Alternativa” festivals, the “Sergei Berinsky Club” and the Piotr Jurgenson Salon in Moscow, the “Sergei Oskolkov and his Friends,” “From the Avant-garde to the Present Day,” “Sound Ways,” “Pythian Games” and “Russian Music. The 21st Century” festivals, the Nikolai Roslavetz and Nahum Gabo Festival for the Arts, the Festival of Contemporary Music in Perm, the “Contrasts” festival in Lviv, the “Two Days and Two Nights of New Music” festival in Odessa and the “Days of New Music” in Chisinau.

He has been a member of the Russian Composers’ Union since 2001. He has taught at the Department of Interdisciplinary Specializations for Musicologists of the Moscow Conservatory since 2002. In 2005-2011 he studied at the Moscow Conservatory’s post-graduate program with Valentina Kholopova, having written his dissertation “Sergei Protopopov: Musical Compositions and Music Theory Works,” which he defended at the Gnesins’ Russian Academy of Music in 2011, receiving the degree of Candidate of the Arts. He has contributed to music theory journals in Russia, USA, Canada, Azerbaijan and other countries, including such journals as “Muzykal’naya akademiya,” “Muzyka i vremya,” “Muzykovedenie” and “Muzykant-klassik” in Moscow, “Problemy muzykal’noy nauki/Music Scholarship” in Ufa, Russia, “20th/21st Century Music” and “New Music Connoisseur” in New York, “Musicworks” in Canada, “Musica Ukrainica” in Odessa and “Musiqi Dunyasi” in Baku, Azerbaijan, and has participated in numerous conferences in Moscow (the Moscow Conservatory and the Scriabin Museum), St. Petersburg (the festival “From the Avant-garde to the Present Day”), Ekaterinburg, Vilnius, Grodno and Berlin.

Since 2012 he has worked as a translator and the member of the editorial board of the journal “Problemy muzykal’noy nauki/Music Scholarship.” He has participated in organizing contemporary music concerts at the Piotr Jurgenson Salon, the Rachmaninoff Hall of the Moscow Conservatory and in numerous other venues in Moscow. In 2024 he is organizing the concert series “Muzykal’nye mosty” [“Musical Bridges”) at the Myaskovsky Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.