Mukhtar Ashrafovich Ashrafi

Born May 29 (June 11), 1912, in Bukhara. Soviet composer and conductor. People’s Artist of the USSR (1951). CPSU member since 1941.

During 1934–36, Ashrafi studied at the Moscow Conservatory (composition class with S. N. Vasilenko). In 1948 he was permitted to sit for his examinations, without having attended courses, at the conductor’s department of the Leningrad Conservatory. He has been an instructor since 1944 and a professor since 1953 at the Tashkent Conservatory. He has been rector of the Tashkent Conservatory since 1971. He has been artistic director and chief conductor of the Uzbek Opera and Ballet Theater in Tashkent since 1930.

Ashrafi and S. N. Vasilenko wrote the first Uzbek opera, The Blizzard (staged at the Navoi Uzbek Theater of Opera and Ballet, 1939). His works include the operas The Great Canal (written with S. N. Vasilenko, 1941, and staged at the same theater; third version, 1953, same theater), Dilorom (staged in 1958 in the same theater), and The Poet’s Heart (staged in 1962 in the same theater), the ballet The Amulet of Love (staged in 1969 in the same theater), Heroic Symphony (1942; USSR State Prize, 1943), the cantatas Uzbekistan (1947) and The Song of Happiness ,(1951; USSR State Prize, 1952), the orchestral suite Ferganskaia (1943), and film music. Ashrafi has been awarded the Order of Lenin and three other orders.