Vladislav Shoot (, Vladislav Alekseyevich Shut' (also spelled Chout, Schut, Sciut, Shut or Szut); 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

He was born Vladislav Shut in Voznesensk, Soviet Union, to Valentina (née Nizovaya) and Alexei Shut, an officer in the navy. He was raised in Sevastopol, where he attended School N14. Shoot studied composition with Nikolai Peiko at the Gnessin Music Institute (the present-day Russian Academy of Music) 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. In 1992 he came to Dartington Hall, England, as a composer-in-residence, in which capacity he served until 1995, and remained a resident of the estate. Shoot's music is published by M.P. Belaieff – Edition Peters (Frankfurt-am-Main)/Schott (Mainz). Individual works have also been published by Boosey & Hawkes and Hans Sikorski. 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.

Music

Shoot's works 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, excepting 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 written 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

Chamber music

Choral

Vocal

Piano

Organ

Films scored

Discography