Alexander Ivashkin

Alexander Ivashkin
Alexander Ivashkin, 1990, Moscow. Photo by D. Smirnov
Background information
Native name	Александр Васильевич Ивашкин
Born	(1948-08-17)17 August 1948 Blagoveshchensk, Soviet Union
Died	31 January 2014(2014-01-31) (aged 65) London, United Kingdom
Instruments	Cello

Alexander Ivashkin (Russian: Александр Васильевич Ивашкин), (17 August 1948 – 31 January 2014) was a Russian cellist, writer, academic and conductor.

Ivashkin studied at the Gnessin Institute and the Moscow Conservatory, where his teachers included Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Valery Polyansky. He also played electric cello, viola da gamba, sitar and piano. Ivashkin became co-principal cellist of the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra. In 1978, he founded the Bolshoi Soloists, a new chamber orchestra.

From 1995, Ivashkin founded the Adam International Cello Festival and Competition. He was also artistic director of annual festivals in London, including The VTB Capital Prize for Young Cellists. In 1999 he founded a series of research and performance seminars/symposia and international concert series at the Centre for Russian Music. He was the curator of Alfred Schnittke Archive at Goldsmiths and the editor-in-chief of the ongoing Schnittke Collected Works Critical edition in 63 volumes. Ivashkin published twenty books, on Schnittke, Ives, Penderecki, Rostropovich and others, and more than 200 articles in Russia, Germany, Italy, the US, the UK and Japan.

Ivashkin was the first performer and dedicatee of many contemporary compositions for cello, by such composers as Alfred Schnittke. He actively collaborated with composers such as John Cage, George Crumb, Mauricio Kagel, Krzysztof Penderecki, Peter Sculthorpe, Brett Dean, Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Giya Kancheli, Arvo Pärt, Rodion Shchedrin, Nikolai Korndorf, Dmitri Smirnov, Elena Firsova, Alexander Raskatov, Vladimir Tarnopolsky, Augusta Read Thomas, James MacMillan, Lyell Cresswell, Roger Redgate, Gabriel Prokofiev and Gillian Whitehead.