Composer Vladimir Martynov has put his own stamp, often religious, on major 20th and 21st century styles. He is also active as an ethnomusicologist. Martynov was born in Moscow on February 20, 1946. He studied piano as a child and became interested in composition, enrolling at the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied composition with Nikolai Sidelnikov and piano with Mikhail Mezlumov. Early in his career, Martynov was an adherent of 12-tone music, which in the 1960s, if not exactly officially encouraged, was not prohibited in the Soviet Union. Already by his graduation in 1971, he had written various 12-tone compositions, including a String Quartet (1966) and a Concerto for oboe and flute (1968). In 1973, Martynov took a position at the Scriabin Museum electronics studio, the leading such facility in the Soviet Union. There, he would have met such influential rising composers as Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke. He also formed a rock group called Boomerang and wrote for them an opera, Seraphic Visions of St. Francis of Assisi. That marked a turn toward religious subject matter in Martynov's music. In the late 1970s, he became interested in the distinctive variety of minimalism that was developing in the music of Arvo Pärt and other composers in the Soviet bloc. Martynov studied the music of Soviet ethnic groups, early Russian chant, and Western medieval and Renaissance music, fusing these influences into his own distinctive take on minimalism. For a time, he taught at the Theological Institute of the Trinity - Saint Sergius and wrote music specifically intended for church services. The religious qualities of his output grew after the fall of the Soviet Union and became evident in such works as the Lamentations of Jeremiah (1992), Stabat Mater (1994), and Requiem (1998). His 2009 opera Vita Nuova had premieres in both London and New York (at Alice Tully Hall). More than 20 of Martynov's compositions have been recorded, many of them on the Le Chant du Monde and Long Arms labels. Martynov has remained active as a senior citizen, teaching at the School of New Cinema in Moscow. In 2020, his Utopia Symphony for narrator, violin, chorus, and orchestra was released in a recording by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir under conductor Vladimir Jurowski.