Roman Stolyar was born December 6, 1967, in Novosibirsk (Russia) in the family of engineers. He received his first musical experiences at the state music school. He was a Novosibirsk Institute of Electrical Engineering student, and he began to study jazz. First, privately. Then, after deciding to quit his engineering career, he enrolled at Novosibirsk Musical College, where he remained until 1989. Igor Dmitriyev was his teacher. He is a Siberian musician and educator in traditional Siberian jazz. Roman chose to study jazz at college, pursuing a free and contemporary style of jazz that was enriched with elements of classical composition and folk roots. His first project, a duo with Mikhail Wolfovitch, an excellent drummer, was formed in 1990. It performed its first concert in Novokuznetsk at the annual Jazz Piano Festival. They began to perform together as an STS trio after Andrey Turygin (alto saxophone player) joined them. Their group was soon invited to the ALOHA project, which is an intercultural program between USSR and USA. They spent two weeks in Hawaii in January 1991. He was soon admitted to Novosibirsk’s State Conservatoire in September 1991. There he studied electronic music and contemporary composition with Professor Youry Yukechev. This outstanding composer is equally proficient in jazz and classical music. He continued his jazz piano career after graduating from Conservatoire. He played in various collectives, including ALTER EGO, a jazz duo with Andrey Turygin, and NEW GENERATION, led by Vladimir Timofeyev, a brilliant tenor saxophonist. His collaboration with Sharomov vocal group, which commissioned him to create three cantatas as well as a lot of arrangements for them, made his music quickly known. He also wrote works for theatres, including two musicals for children theater called “Smile” and was eventually invited to be the principal composer for Novosibirsk Academic Theater, “Globe”, in September 2000. He is an educator and works in the Novosibirsk Musical College’s jazz department. There he developed his own course, “Theoretical Foundations of Jazz Improvisation”. He and Yelena Silantieva, a young singer, formed a new duo called SHANTI in 2000. This gives Roman the chance to combine different types of music, including folk and jazz. Roman also created the free improvising trio TRIGRAFICA with Mikhail Sergeev – percussion).
