Vladislav Alekseyevich Shoot (Russian: Владислав Алексеевич Шуть, romanised:Vladislav Alekseyevich Shut; 3 March 1941 – 9 March 2022) was a Russian-British composer of contemporary classical music. Born in Voznesensk, Soviet Union, now Ukraine, he moved to the United Kingdom in the early 1990s, settling on the artists' estate of Dartington Hall.
Biography
Shoot was born Vladislav Shut in Voznesensk, Soviet Union, to Valentina (née Nizovaya) and Alexei Shut, a navy officer. He was raised in Sevastopol, where he attended School N14.
Shoot studied composition with Nikolai Peiko at the Gnessin Music Institute in Moscow, graduating in 1967. From 1967 to 1982, he worked as the music editor at the Sovetsky Kompozitor publishers in Moscow. In 1982, he turned to freelance composing, earning his living by writing film scores. In 1990, Shoot – together with a small group of Moscow composers headed by Edison Denisov – founded the Association for Contemporary Music, a revival of a post-Revolutionary avant-garde composers' association of the same name.
He married the artist Irina Karpey in 1970. His son, Eliahu "Eli" Shoot, is also a composer (teaching at Tulane University), and his daughter, Veronika "Nika" Shoot, is a pianist.
Shoot died on 9 March 2022, aged 81.
Music
Shoot's works were met with much admiration in the West from the 1980s onward. He preferred smaller ensembles, up to a chamber orchestra, which he tied into sound compositions or groups of overlapping sound layers. Even his symphonies, excluding the High Cross Symphony (1998), are chamber symphonies. He retained serial processes, used post-Romantic elements, and quoted composers of the past, with Alban Berg as the clearest influence. Shoot allowed performers of his works a certain freedom of interpretation within the bounds of a controlled aleatoric technique.
His music has been performed at numerous venues and festivals throughout Europe, as well as in South Korea and the United States. The music he wrote in the UK has been performed by leading British ensembles and orchestras, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra and Sinfonia 21. An 80th birthday celebration concert took place on 29 June 2021 at St George's, Bloomsbury, in London.
Selected works
Orchestral
Sinfonia da Camera No. 3 for flute, oboe and two ensembles (percussion, strings), 1978
Romantic Messages for flute, bassoon, prepared piano and string orchestra, 1979
Largo Sinfonia for organ and small orchestra (15 players), 1981
Warum? for small orchestra (15 players), 1986
Ex Animo for large orchestra, 1988
Sinfonia da Camera No. 4 for tam-tam and strings, 1992
Sinfonia da Camera No. 5 for small orchestra (16 players), 1992
Serenade for string orchestra, 1995
Divertimento for recorder, vibraphone and string orchestra, 1997
High-Cross Symphony for large orchestra, 1998
Sinfonia da Camera No. 6 for string orchestra and percussion, 2005
Chamber music
Sonata-fantasia for violin and piano, 1969, revised 2001
Cuckoo's Rhymes (20 Miniatures for Children) for violin and piano, 1969, revised 1999
Sonata for cello, 1970, revised 1999
Youth Album for violin and piano, 1971, revised 1999
Sinfonia da Camera No. 1 for four cellos, double bass and timpani, 1973
Sinfonia da Camera No. 2 for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, viola, cello and double bass, 1975
Five Easy Pieces for French horn and piano, 1976, revised 2001
Sonata Breve for flute, 1977
Trio for bassoon, cello and percussion, 1978
Solo per Fagotto for bassoon, 1978
Metamorphosis for saxophone, harp, double bass and percussion, 1979
Trio for two clarinets and bass clarinet, 1982
Parable for six percussion, 1983
Espressivo for flute, oboe, violin, cello and piano, 1984
Epitaph for French horn, two trumpets, trombone and tuba, 1984
Mini-partita for viola and piano, 1987
Four Versions for bassoon and string quartet, 1990 (also arranged for bassoon, violin, viola and cello, 1996)
Offering for violin, cello and piano, 1991
Serenade for string quartet, 1994
Pantomime for flute and harpsichord, 1995
Con Passione for string quartet and piano, 1995
Amoroso for clarinet and string quartet, 1996
Chaconne for accordion, 1999
Pastorale for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and piano, 2002
Eternal Rest for three percussion, 2002
Suite for string quartet, 2003
Three Encounters with Shostakovich for clarinet, horn, string quartet, piano and percussion, 2006
Choral
She came and went (text by James Russell Lowell) for mixed chorus, 2001 (also version for mixed chorus and soprano recorder, 2001)
Two Holy Sonnets (text by John Donne) for mixed chorus, 2003
↑McBurney, Gerard. "Vladislav Shoot", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 23, pp.275–6
Holopova, Valentina. Secrets of the Moscow Composition School in Vladislav Shoot's "Pure Music" in: «Ex oriente...III»: Eight Composers from the former USSR, ed. V. Tsenova (studia slavica musicologica, vol. 31) (Berlin: Ernst Kuhn, 1997), ISBN3-928864-92-0
Lobanova, Marina. Musical Styla and Genre: History and Modernity (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000), pp.167–9.
McBurney, Gerard. "Vladislav Shoot", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 23, pp.275–6.
