Vladislav Shoot studied composition at the Gnessin Music Institute (the present Russian Academy of Music). Served as the music editor of The Soviet Composer publishers, using his position to champion the Soviet avant-garde music, which at the time had been suppressed and often banned. Later Shoot turned to free-lance composing, earning his living by film scoring in addition to concert music. Writing music to about 20 films provided him with fertile ground for timbral, textural and stylistic experimentation, some of which found its way into his concert music.
“His undertakings in this sphere appeared to be so successful that during the period from the mid-eighties to the early 1990s Vladislav Shoot was acclaimed in Moscow as the most prominent composer of incidental scores to film, in this respect succeeding Alfred Schnittke, who…left for Germany.”
In: Kholopova, V. Undeground Music from the former USSR (Harwood Academic Publisher, 1997)
In 1990 Shoot, together with a small group of Moscow composers headed by Edison Denisov, founded the Association for Contemporary Music (ACM-2),
a revival of a post-Revolutionary avant-garde composers’ association of the same name, founded by Roslavets, Mossolov and Luriè, but disbanded in the early 1930s. ACM-2 had much success in promoting and performing the music of its members and contemporary music in general, but within five years of its existence its ranks were visibly thinned by emigration.
In 1992, Shoot and his family left for Dartington Hall, England, where he served as composer-in-residence until 1995, remaining a resident of the idyllic country estate to this day. Shoot naturalized as a British citizen in 1999.
The music of Vladislav Shoot has been performed at numerous venues and festivals among which are Moscow Autumn (Moscow), Making Music Together (Boston), Almeida (London), New Beginnigs (Glasgow), Ars Musica (Brussels), Wien Modern (Vienna), Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Schonheit-ein Utopie (Frankfurt), Presences (Paris), Dartington International Summer School and many others.
His music has been recorded by Moscow, Cologne, Paris, Berlin, Budapest and London (BBC-3) radios, and released on LP and CDs (Olimpia records and others).
His publishers have included Compositor and Musika (Moscow), Wydawnistwo Muzyczne (Krakow), Ricordi (Milan), Sikorski (Hamburg), Le Chan Du Monde (Paris), G. Schirmer (USA), Boosey & Hawkes (London), Peters (Frankfurt).
Since 1993 Shoot’s music has been published mainly by M.P. Belaieff
(in association with Peters and later with Schott).
Shoot has been a featured composer at the Meet the Composer series by the Philharmonia Orchestra, and has been commissioned and premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Dartington International Summer School, Radio France, the Cheltenham Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival and other ensembles and organisations.
He lives with his wife Irina, an artist. The next generation of Shoot’s family continues its musical tradition. His son Eli is also a composer and daughter Veronika is a concert pianist.
