Composer Eduard Artemyev has earned equal renown in the fields of film and electronic music. In the latter, he is both a pioneer and a leading figure, having written some of the first electronic compositions in the then Soviet Union, and he has gained attention from electronic music fans beyond the classical/concert sphere. Eduard Nikolaevich Artemyev was born on November 30, 1937, in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, then part of the Soviet Union. His name has been transliterated in various ways. Artemyev attended the Moscow Conservatory, studying composition under Yuri Shaporin and graduating in 1960. After he left school, his attention was caught by the new ANS synthesizer, the first in the Soviet Union, developed by engineer Yevgeny Murzin. His early compositions, including Mosaic (1967) and Twelve Glimpses on the World of Sound (1969), helped make Moscow an early center of the electronic avant-garde. In the 1970s, Artemyev turned to film composition, providing the score for the groundbreaking 1972 Soviet science fiction film Solaris. He has gone on to write scores for more than 40 films, in both electronic and conventional idioms, including, in addition to Solaris, two more films by celebrated director Andrei Tarkovsky, The Mirror (1975) and Stalker (1979). As Russian films such as Burnt by the Sun (1994) found viewership in the West, Artemyev's name became better known there as well. His electronic compositions attracted attention beyond academic and classical spheres; his composition Space Melody, for example, was included on the 2002 release Hard NRG: The Album, Vol. 3. Artemyev also continued to compose in traditional media, issuing an opera, Crime and Punishment, as well as what writer Margarita Katunyan termed "quasi-symphonies." Artemyev's composition Campaign or Death of the Hero was used as part of the opening ceremonies of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. At least a dozen of Artemyev's film scores are available on recordings in the West, mostly on small labels such as Travelling, Revolver USA, and Modern Silence. ~ James Manheim