Album Notes

Please visit composer's web site at www.myspace.com/cyrildeaconoff to hear more works.
American composer, conductor, pianist, and organist Cyril Deaconoff (born Kirill Dyachkov), originally from Russia, was born in Moscow. He attended Gnesine State Music College and is a graduate of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory (Composition and Choral Conducting). In December 2006, Deaconoff completed his Doctoral degree in Conducting at Indiana University Bloomington, where he also studied composition with Sven-David Sandström. His other composition and orchestration teachers included Marina Kovaleva, Andrei Golovin, Alexander Pirumov, Yuri Butsko, and Roman Ledeniov. Deaconoff’s choral composition Two choruses for children’s voices with Lyrics by Maikov received one of the prizes at the Pushkin Composition Contest in 1998 and was subsequently performed at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. A number of his works, including a choral ballade A Northern Tale, were also performed at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. An active choral/orchestral conductor, Deaconoff was one of only sixteen conductors chosen by Chorus America to participate in the 2006 Beethoven Conducting Master Class with the Philadelphia Singers and their Music Director David Hayes, and Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Christoff Eschenbach. He taught at Carroll College, Wisconsin and Indiana University. Deaconoff’s recent conducting projects at Indiana University included a concert with the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and orchestra entitled “American Tribute”, a performance of his new cantata, and a recording of his orchestral overture Symphonic Parallels. Several of his recent works, including cantata Canticles of Love, Despair, and Hope; A Northern Tale; and Symphonic Parallels are now being published by E.C. Schirmer. Deaconoff’s most recent work, String Quartet No.1, was selected by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra for their concert of contemporary music entitled Valley Voices. A concert of Cyril's chamber instrumental, vocal, and choral music took place in San Francisco on May 25 2008. Cyril Deaconoff is currently an Organist and Composer in Residence at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in San Francisco and Assistant Conductor for the Symphony Silicon Valley in San Jose.