Dmitri Pokrovsky


Dmitri Viktorovich Pokrovsky was a Russian folk music researcher and musician best known for his efforts to rediscover authentic and often near extinct rural musical traditions from many different regions of Russia and re-enacting them with the Dmitri Pokrovsky Ensemble.

Biography

In the early 1970s, Dmitri Pokrovsky was a student of conducting at Moscow’s Gnessin Pedagogical Institute of Music, from which he graduated in 1972. Frustrated with the then manner of interpretation of Russian folk music, he developed a new approach to its performance which went against the established patterns and rules. His inspiration came after hearing a performance in a remote village in Russia, which embedded within the oldest of traditions. In the sound made by a group of old women singing, Pokrovsky heard songs passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years. These songs were extraordinary, complicated, dense in form, and the performance style was unknown in towns and cities. These were the authentic performance style of traditional Russian folk songs.
Pokrovsky set out imitating this traditional style with a goal was to preserve and transmit it to a new generation of performers and audiences. Dmitri was one of the first musicians in Russia who undertook to bridge the gap between the old and new musical vocabulary
Pokrovsky has lectured at America’s Smithsonian Institution, Princeton University and the Omega Institute, and was a Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College, USA. Directing his Ensemble, Pokrovsky wrote numerous scores for films and was an active musical director in Russian theatre. In 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev honoured Pokrovsky with the Government Award, the Soviet Union’s highest recognition for artistic excellence, a testament to the scholarship, musicianship and vitality with which he and the Ensemble had preserved Russian tradition, culture and customs.
In 1996 he died aged 52 from aortic rupture.

Education

1973 to 1996