Boris Tarakanov
Boris Tarakanov is an orchestra and choir conductor, author, student of Italy and the Italian language, and the founder of the largest free online music score library. His project, Boris Tarakanov’s Music Score Library, has been granted official status as a national media repository. Since 2025, Mr. Tarakanov has collaborated with composer Baruch Berliner and producer Nachum Slutzker.
He graduated from the State University of Management with a degree in Enterprise Management and from the Moscow State University of Culture and Arts with degrees in Applied Musicology and Conducting, the latter under the guidance of Prof. Elena Krugova.
Until 2012, he was a senior expert at the Bank of Russia, where he initiated the creation of the Bank of Russia’s Academic Choir under the direction of Anna Khabarova. Since 2004, Mr. Tarakanov—a professor, full member of the Union of Journalists of Russia, and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences—has served as Musical Director and Chief Conductor of the Academic Grand Choir of the Mendeleev Russian University of Chemical Technology. He received the Russian Presidential Grant for Culture and the Arts in 2017 and the International Vladislav Krapivin Literary Prize in 2007. Since 2008, he has presided over the annual international festival of the “Chorus Inside” Noncommercial Choral Art Movement, and since 2009, he has headed the movement itself. In 2013, he became a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian Choral Society, and since 2017, he has also served as Musical Director and Chief Conductor of the Academic Choir of the Moscow Metro.
Mr. Tarakanov, together with Pavel Sukharnikov, was the architect of a historic event—Opera in the Moscow Metro—which took place overnight from May 13 to 14, 2016, in the underground space of Kropotkinskaya station. He served as the musical director and chief choir conductor of the first performance of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana in the Moscow Metro. The opera was performed by soloists from the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia and the Royal Danish Opera, accompanied by the Academic Grand Choir conducted by Mr. Tarakanov and the Presidential Orchestra of Russia. To mark the occasion, the Moscow Metro issued 700,000 tickets featuring the names of the cast.
The following year, on the night of July 12, 2017, the world premiere of The Silmarillion: In Memory of Tolkien, an opera-oratorio by Russian composer Mikhail Kostylev, was held, performed by soloists, choir, and symphony orchestra. The performance, part of the Opera in the Moscow Metro project under the direction of Mr. Tarakanov, was accompanied by the Presidential Orchestra of Russia. Another remarkable event within the project took place on the night of October 25, 2019, with the world premiere of the Confession of Love oratorio-mass and cantata by Polish composer Andrzej Marko, performed by soloists, choir, and symphony orchestra, and accompanied by the Moscow Chamber Orchestra of the Pavel Slobodkin Center.
Mr. Tarakanov gives monthly master classes in choral conducting and choral arts management in Russia, Italy, Turkey, and other countries.
His literary contributions include the science fiction novels The Ring of Time (Chasing the Ghost Train) and The Wheel in the Abandoned Park, co-written with Anton Fyodorov, the book on conductor and composer Georgiy Struve Fate and Music, co-authored with Anton Fyodorov and Ekaterina Sharipova, and the textbook on contemporary choral studies The Choir to Your Aid, co-written with Anton Fyodorov.