Biography

Born in Togliatti, Russia, Polina Nazaykinskaya has been studying music since the age of four, and composed her first large-scale work at 14. She went on to create music for both chamber and full orchestras, as well as art songs, film music, musical theater works, an opera, and, recently, her first symphony, “April Song”. In June 2018, The RIOULT Dance NY premiered Polina's first ballet, Nostalghia. The premiere took place at The Joyce Theater in New York City. Last season The Albany Symphony Orchestra premiered Polina`s new symphonic poem "Fenix". In 2020-2021 concert season Polina`s orchestral music will be performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, the Symphoria, Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes and the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. In November 2020 MorDance will be premiering Polina`s new ballet “Encounters” at Hunter College in New York City. 

Polina has received many national and international awards, including the Charles Ives Scholarship from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, while her music received laudatory reviews from the press. Polina's music has been performed by the Russian National Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the Yale Philharmonia Orchestra, the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Russia, the Omsk Philharmonic Orchestra, the St. Olaf Philharmonia, the US Army Orchestra, the Hermitage Orchestra and chorus. Polina has collaborated with top conductors, including Osmo Vänskä, Teodor Currentzis, Fabio Mastrangelo, and Hannu Lintu.

Polina has received a music education both in Russia and the United States. She graduated from the Tchaikovsky Conservatory College in Moscow, with concentrations in both composition, under Konstantin Batashov, and violin. Polina then continued her studies of composition at the Yale School of Music with Christopher Theofanidis, Ezra Laderman and with Tania León at the Graduate Center CUNY. Polina is an Adjunct Lecturer of Composition at Brooklyn College Conservatory and a teaching artist at the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven.

The Rising

The Rising represents the evolutionary development of humanity over time. Literally and figuratively. Just as we came to be as human society through many moons, many summers and winters to be the people of Earth we are today. The strength of human spirit and mind that always drives forward, searches for answers and dreams of the future. The fellowship of people as together we stand, joined in the choir of billion voices. The ascending motive element ‘rises’ from the get-go, giving the music an organic sense of rising. The 10 violins are voices of people, intertwined, interdependent, not always in unison but united by the evolutionary force. To survive, to rise further and higher, to realize the potential of life to its fullest together, united.