Nikolai Kapustin was a Soviet-born Russian composer and pianist active from the Cold War era into the twenty-first century, trained at the Moscow Conservatory and based for most of his career in Moscow, where he also toured extensively with Oleg Lundstrem’s jazz orchestra. His output of 161 opus numbers is built on a fusion of jazz idiom with classical structure, meticulously notated rather than improvised, and includes twenty piano sonatas, six piano concertos, and sets such as the 24 Preludes in Jazz Style. He died in Moscow in 2020 at the age of 82 from pneumonia related to COVID-19.

Kapustin is increasingly recognized as a pioneering figure in bridging jazz and classical piano writing, producing a fully notated repertoire that captures the rhythmic energy and harmonic language of jazz within rigorous classical forms. His works have become staples of the contemporary piano repertoire, championed by leading international pianists, and are now widely studied as a distinctive pedagogical link between the jazz and classical traditions.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Kapustin